Give Me: Songs for Lovers

(Paperback)

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Description

In 2002, 20-year-old Irina Denezhkina woke up to find herself famous. Brought up in the provincial, industrial town of Yekaterinburg, she had amused herself by writing stories about the lives of the teenagers she saw around her. When she published them on the internet, they were spotted by a well-known literary critic and nominated for Russia's 'National Bestseller Award'. Immediately she got a publisher in Russia and, following that, international publishers across the world, including America and Britain. Her stories tell it like it is for Russia's new generation, brought up in a complex post-Communist world where the influences are more MTV than Marx. Teenage sex, alcohol, violence - preoccupations familiar to the urban youth of the West - are mixed with brilliant observations of particularly Russian problems - the effects of the war in Chechnya on a young soldier for example. Compared in Russia to Salinger and Hemingway - or to the cult film Kids, this extraordinary debut has shaken up the rather stagnant, old-fashioned Russian literary scene with the freshness of its language, form and subject matter and has paved the way for the future.

Reviews

Hilarious, heartbreaking glimpses of Russian youth seeking solace in sex, drugs, drink * Independent *
The scenes Denezhkina paints are vividly hued, juicy and mouthwateringly acid... A promising start... Exhilirating * New York Times *
Irina is the heroine of a generation whose parents were orphaned by Socialism. She has learned a harsh and pitiless version of Capitalism: 'No one owes anybody anything' is the obsessive mantra of her characters * La Stampa *

Author Bio

Irina Denezhkina was born in 1981 and lives in Yekaterinburg. Since the publication in 2002 of Give Me- Songs for Lovers, she has become a star in Russia and her book has become a bestseller. In 2005, she was runner up in the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and in 2008, she was the recipient of Romania's Ovid Festival Prize, awarded to a prominent young talent.