Literary St. Petersburg

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

Much of Russian literature is St. Petersburg literature: set in the city, about the city, or written by writers living there. This unique guide profiles fifteen authors whose works and lives were intimately connected to this magnificent setting. Biographical sketches focus on the city as the writers knew it, a sense of their work, the literary and social circles in which they moved, and the sites associated with them. Travelers can wander through the museum where the teenage Vladimir Nabokov romanced his girlfriend and see the prison where Anna Akhmatova was inspired to write her epic poem about the Great Terror. They can find the statue that comes to life in Pushkin's poem The Bronze Horseman and visit the square where Crime and Punishment's murderer/hero kneels on the ground to ask God's forgiveness. Literary St. Petersburg opens the door to one of the most beautiful cities on earth and a body of literature that is as rich, subtle, and expressive as any in the world.

Reviews

"A guide to famous St. Petersburg writers from Alexander Pushkin to Josef Brodsky with the expected information about museums and statues, also displays Blair's refined critical temperament: It's full of nuanced literary insights into the writers that one would never find in a Fodor's or Frommer's." --Philadelphia Inquirer

"This compact guide begins with Russian literature's birth in the former capital of imperial Russia..Blair's itineraries are based on the lives of 15 of Russia's most important writers...[and open] the city, if not the brooding Russian psyche, to the traveler." --San Francisco Chronicle

Author Bio

Elaine Blair was born in St. Petersburg and now lives in Southern California. Most recently she was on the staff of The New York Review of Books. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The American Scholar, The Nation, and The Village Voice.