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Deathless (novel)
''Deathless'' is an alternate history novel by Catherynne M. Valente, combining the Russian fairy tale '' The Death of Koschei the Deathless'' with the events and aftermath of the Russian Revolution. The novel follows the life of Marya Morevna as she transforms from a young child witnessing the revolution to her newfound position as bride after her marriage with Koschei, Tsar of Life. The book is divided into six parts and is told primarily through the third person perspective of Marya Morevna, however, it does feature other characters such as Ivan Tsarevich. Plot Marya Morevna and her sisters live with their upper middle class parents in Saint Petersburg before and during the Russian Revolution. Marya witnesses birds transform into handsome young men who marry her sisters, and meets the council of domovoi or brownies who live in her house along with the other families that get assigned to live there by the Bolsheviks, and cherishes her secret knowledge that magic exists in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catherynne M
Catherynne M. Valente (born May 5, 1979) is an American fiction writer, poet, and literary critic. For her speculative fiction novels she has won the annual James Tiptree, Andre Norton, and Mythopoeic Fantasy awards. Her short fiction has appeared in '' Clarkesworld Magazine'', the World Fantasy Award–winning anthologies '' Salon Fantastique'' and ''Paper Cities'', along with numerous "Year's Best" volumes. Her critical work has appeared in the ''International Journal of the Humanities'' as well as in numerous essay collections. Career Catherynne M. Valente's novels have been nominated for Hugo, World Fantasy, and Locus awards. Her 2009 book '' Palimpsest'' won the Lambda Award for LGBT Science Fiction or Fantasy. Her two-volume series ''The Orphan's Tales'' won the 2008 Mythopoeic Award, and its first volume, ''The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden'', won the 2006 James Tiptree Jr. Award and was nominated for the 2007 World Fantasy Award. In 2012, Valente's work wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baba Yaga
In Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga, also spelled Baba Jaga (from Polish), is a supernatural being (or one of a trio of sisters of the same name) who appears as a deformed and/or ferocious-looking woman. In fairy tales Baba Yaga flies around in a mortar, wields a pestle, and dwells deep in the forest in a hut usually described as standing on chicken legs. Baba Yaga may help or hinder those that encounter or seek her out and may play a maternal role; she has associations with forest wildlife. According to Vladimir Propp's folktale morphology, Baba Yaga commonly appears as either a donor or a villain, or may be altogether ambiguous. Dr. Andreas Johns identifies Baba Yaga as "one of the most memorable and distinctive figures in eastern European folklore", and observes that she is "enigmatic" and often exhibits "striking ambiguity". Johns summarizes Baba Yaga as "a many-faceted figure, capable of inspiring researchers to see her as a Cloud, Moon, Death, Winter, Snake, Bird, Pelican ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Susanna Clarke
Susanna Mary Clarke (born 1 November 1959) is an English author known for her debut novel '' Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell'' (2004), a Hugo Award-winning alternative history. Clarke began ''Jonathan Strange'' in 1993 and worked on it during her spare time. For the next decade, she published short stories from the ''Strange'' universe, but it was not until 2003 that Bloomsbury bought her manuscript and began work on its publication. The novel became a best-seller. Two years later, she published a collection of her short stories, ''The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories'' (2006). Both Clarke's debut novel and her short stories are set in a magical England and written in a pastiche of the styles of 19th-century writers such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. While ''Strange'' focuses on the relationship of two men, Jonathan Strange and Gilbert Norrell, the stories in ''Ladies'' focus on the power women gain through magic. Clarke's second novel, '' Piranesi'', was publis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palimpsest (novel)
''Palimpsest'' is a novel by Catherynne M. Valente, published in March 2009. It follows four separate characters as they discover and explore a mysterious city accessed only at night. Summary The novel follows four travelers: Oleg, a New York City locksmith; the beekeeper November; Ludovico, a binder of rare books; and a young Japanese woman named Sei. They have all lost something important in their life: a wife, lover, sister, or direction. They find themselves in Palimpsest after each spend a night with a stranger who has a tattooed map of a section of the city on their body. During the course of the novel, November recalls a favorite book of hers as a child. This book, which is only mentioned briefly in ''Palimpsest'', was turned into a full-length novel in 2009. Valente wrote ''The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making ''Fairyland'' is a series of fantasy novels by Catherynne M. Valente. The novels follow a 12-year-old girl named September as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The A
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disenchantment
In social science, disenchantment (german: Entzauberung) is the cultural rationalization and devaluation of religion apparent in modern society. The term was borrowed from Friedrich Schiller by Max Weber to describe the character of a modernized, bureaucratic, secularized Western society. In Western society, according to Weber, scientific understanding is more highly valued than belief, and processes are oriented toward rational goals, as opposed to traditional society, in which "the world remains a great enchanted garden". Enlightenment ambivalence Weber's ambivalent appraisal of the process of disenchantment as both positive ''and'' negative was taken up by the Frankfurt school in their examination of the self-destructive elements in Enlightenment rationalism. Jürgen Habermas has subsequently striven to find a positive foundation for modernity in the face of disenchantment, even while appreciating Weber's recognition of how far secular society was created from, and is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established in January 1918. The Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations (especially the various groups collectively known as the White Army) of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. Starting in February 1946, the Red Army, along with the Soviet Navy, embodied the main component of the Soviet Armed Forces; taking the official name of "Soviet Army", until its dissolution in 1991. The Red Army provided the largest land warfare, land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II, and its Soviet invasion of Manchuria, invasion of Manchuria assisted the unconditional surrender of Empire of Japan, Imperial Japan. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alkonost
The Alkonost is a legendary woman-headed bird in Slavic folklore. Alkonost is more likely an individual character, as was noted in some legends about this bird. Folklore The name of the Alkonost came from a Greek demigoddess whose name was Alcyone. In Greek mythology, Alcyone was transformed by the gods into a kingfisher. Alkonost makes amazingly beautiful sounds, and those who hear these sounds forget everything they know and want nothing more ever again. She lives in the underworld with her counterpart, the Sirin. The Alkonost lays her eggs on a beach and then rolls them into the sea. When the Alkonost's eggs hatch, a thunderstorm sets in and the sea becomes so rough that it becomes impossible to traverse. She is also the sister of other birds from Slavic mythology, such as Rarog and Stratim. According to folk tales, at the morning of the Apple Feast of the Saviour day, Sirin flies into the apple orchard and cries sadly. In the afternoon, the Alkonost flies to this pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian Marxist revolutionary, political theorist and politician. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Trotskyism. Born to a wealthy Jewish family in Yanovka (now Bereslavka, Ukraine), Trotsky embraced Marxism after moving to Mykolaiv in 1896. In 1898, he was arrested for revolutionary activities and subsequently exiled to Siberia. He escaped from Siberia in 1902 and moved to London, where he befriended Vladimir Lenin. In 1903, he sided with Julius Martov's Mensheviks against Lenin's Bolsheviks during the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party's initial organisational split. Trotsky helped organize the failed 1905 Russian Revolution, Russian Revolution of 1905, after which he was again arrested and exiled to Siberia. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Josef Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Ideologically adhering to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, he formalised these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies are called Stalinism. Born to a poor family in Gori in the Russian Empire (now Georgia), Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He edited the party's newspaper, ''Pravda'', and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings and protection ra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rasputin
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (; rus, links=no, Григорий Ефимович Распутин ; – ) was a Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man who befriended the family of Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, thus gaining considerable influence in late Imperial Russia. Rasputin was born to a peasant family in the Siberian village of Pokrovskoye in the Tyumensky Uyezd of Tobolsk Governorate (now Yarkovsky District of Tyumen Oblast). He had a religious conversion experience after taking a pilgrimage to a monastery in 1897. He has been described as a monk or as a (wanderer or pilgrim), though he held no official position in the Russian Orthodox Church. He traveled to St. Petersburg in 1903 or the winter of 1904–1905, where he captivated some church and social leaders. He became a society figure and met Emperor Nicholas and Empress Alexandra in November 1905. In late 1906, Rasputin began acting as a healer for the imperial couple's only son, Alexe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicholas II
Nicholas II or Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov; spelled in pre-revolutionary script. ( 186817 July 1918), known in the Russian Orthodox Church as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer,. was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland and Grand Duke of Finland, ruling from 1 November 1894 until his abdication on 15 March 1917. During his reign, Nicholas gave support to the economic and political reforms promoted by his prime ministers, Sergei Witte and Pyotr Stolypin. He advocated modernization based on foreign loans and close ties with France, but resisted giving the new parliament (the Duma) major roles. Ultimately, progress was undermined by Nicholas's commitment to autocratic rule, strong aristocratic opposition and defeats sustained by the Russian military in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. By March 1917, public support for Nicholas had collapsed and he was forced to abdicate the throne, thereby ending the Romanov dynasty's 304-year rule of Russia (1613� ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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