Donald Rayfield
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Donald Rayfield
Patrick Donald Rayfield OBE (born 12 February 1942, Oxford) is an English academic and Emeritus Professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary University of London. He is an author of books about Russian and Georgian literature, and about Joseph Stalin and his secret police. He is also a series editor for books about Russian writers and ''intelligentsia''. He has translated Georgian, Russian and Uzbek poets and prose writers. In March 2025, Donald Rayfield declined an award from the Writers' House of Georgia. Speaking at an event in London, he stated that he could not accept any gift associated with the Georgian Dream party. Bibliography *''Dream of Lhasa: The Life of Nikolay Przhevalsky'' (1976) *''The Cherry Orchard: Catastrophe and Comedy'' (1994) *''Anton Chekhov: A Life'' (1997) (and several other reprints) *''Understanding Chekhov: A Critical Study of Chekhov's Prose and Drama'' (1999) *''The Garnett Book of Russian Verse'' (2000) *'' The Literature of Georgia: A H ...
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England
England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It shares Anglo-Scottish border, a land border with Scotland to the north and England–Wales border, another land border with Wales to the west, and is otherwise surrounded by the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south, the Celtic Sea to the south-west, and the Irish Sea to the west. Continental Europe lies to the south-east, and Ireland to the west. At the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 census, the population was 56,490,048. London is both List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, the largest city and the Capital city, capital. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic. It takes its name from the Angles (tribe), Angles, a Germanic peoples, Germanic tribe who settled du ...
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Georgian Dream
Georgian Dream – Democratic Georgia (GD), also colloquially known as the Kotsebi, is a Conservatism, conservative and populism, populist List of political parties in Georgia (country), political party in Georgia (country), Georgia, which has ruled the country since 2012. Bidzina Ivanishvili, who founded the party on 19 April 2012 and is widely considered to be the ''de facto'' leader of Georgia, serves as the party's honorary chairman. The party's electoral number is 41. The party won the 2012 Georgian parliamentary election, general election in 2012, being part of an eclectic coalition also called Georgian Dream (political coalition), Georgian Dream, which included both Western world, pro-Western Liberalism, liberal and List of anti-NATO parties and organizations, anti-NATO Nationalism, nationalist parties. Subsequently, the Georgian Dream party (independent of its coalition) also won all subsequent general elections and is a ruling party of the country. Georgian Dream orig ...
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Mikheil Javakhishvili
Mikheil Javakhishvili ( ka, მიხეილ ჯავახიშვილი; birth surname: Adamashvili ადამაშვილი) (20 November 1880 – 30 September 1937) was a Georgian and Soviet novelist who is regarded as one of the top twentieth-century Georgian writers. His first story appeared in 1903, but then the writer lapsed into a long pause before returning to writing in the early 1920s. His recalcitrance to the Soviet ideological pressure cost him life: he was executed during the Great Purge and his writings were banned for nearly twenty years. In the words of the modern British scholar of Russian and Georgian literature, Donald Rayfield, "his vivid story-telling, straight in medias res, his buoyant humour, subtle irony, and moral courage merit comparison with those of Stendhal, Guy de Maupassant, and Émile Zola. In modern Georgian prose only Konstantine Gamsakhurdia could aspire to the same international level." Early life and career He was born as Mikh ...
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Akaki Tsereteli
Count Akaki Tsereteli ( ka, აკაკი წერეთელი) (1840–1915), often mononymously known as Akaki, was a prominent Georgian poet and national liberation movement figure. Early life and education Tsereteli was born in the village of Skhvitori, Imereti region of western Georgia on June 9, 1840, to a prominent Georgian aristocratic family. His father was Prince Rostom Tsereteli, his mother, Princess Ekaterine, a daughter of Ivane Abashidze and a great-granddaughter of King Solomon I of Imereti. Following an old family tradition, Tsereteli spent his childhood years living with a peasant’s family in the village of Savane. He was brought up by peasant nannies, all of which made him feel empathy for the peasants’ life in Georgia. He graduated from the Kutaisi Classical Gymnasium in 1852 and the University of Saint Petersburg Faculty of Oriental Languages in 1863. Career and legacy Tsereteli was a close friend of Ilia Chavchavadze, a Georgian progressive int ...
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Avelum
''Avelum'', Otar Chiladze's fifth novel, is the second to be translated into English. Translations * The Russian translation of ''Avelum'', ''Авелум'', was refused by every publisher in Moscow, even though Chiladze's other novels were best sellers in Russia. * The novel was published by Garnet Press in 2013. * The novel has been translated into several languages, including German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ....Burusi.com References Novel at Goodreads.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Avelum 1995 novels 20th-century Georgian novels Novels by Otar Chiladze Georgian magic realism novels Philosophical novels ...
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Otar Chiladze
Otar Chiladze ( ka, ოთარ ჭილაძე; March 20, 1933 — October 1, 2009) was a Georgian writer who played a prominent role in the resurrection of Georgian prose in the post-Joseph Stalin era. His novels characteristically fuse Sumerian and Hellenic mythology with the predicaments of a modern Georgian intellectual.Rayfield, Donald (2000), '' The Literature of Georgia: A History'', pp. 283-7. Routledge, . Life and work Chiladze was born in Sighnaghi, a town in Kakheti, the easternmost province of then- Soviet Georgia. He graduated from the Tbilisi State University with a degree in journalism in 1956. His works, primary poetry, first appeared in the 1950s. At the same time, Chiladze engaged in literary journalism, working for leading magazines in Tbilisi. He gained popularity with his series of lengthy, atmospheric novels, such as '' A Man Was Going Down the Road'' (1972–3), '' Everyone That Findeth Me'' (1976), '' Avelum'' (1995), and others. He was a chief edit ...
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Nikolai Leskov
Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov (; – ) was a Russian novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and journalist, who also wrote under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky. Praised for his unique writing style and innovative experiments in form, and held in high esteem by Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky among others, Leskov is credited with creating a comprehensive picture of contemporary Russian society using mostly short literary forms. His major works include ''Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (novella), Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk'' (1865), which was later made into an Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (opera), opera by Dmitri Shostakovich, Shostakovich); ''The Cathedral Folk'' (1872); ''The Enchanted Wanderer'' (1873); and "The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea" (1881). Leskov received his formal education at the Oryol Lyceum#Russia, Lyceum. In 1847 Leskov joined the Oryol criminal court office, later transferring to Kiev, where he worked as a clerk, ...
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Varlam Shalamov
Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov (; 18 June 1907 – 17 January 1982), baptized as Varlaam, was a Russian writer, journalist, poet and Gulag survivor. He spent much of the period from 1937 to 1951 imprisoned in forced-labor camps in the Arctic region of Kolyma, due in part to his support of Leon Trotsky and praise of writer Ivan Bunin. In 1946, near death, he became a medical assistant while still a prisoner. He remained in that role for the duration of his sentence, then for another two years after being released, until 1953. From 1954 to 1978, he wrote a set of short stories about his experiences in the labor camps, which were collected and published in six volumes, collectively known as ''Kolyma Tales''. These books were initially published in the West, in English translation, starting in the 1960s; they were eventually published in the original Russian, but only became officially available in the Soviet Union in 1987, in the post-glasnost era. ''The Kolyma Tales'' are considere ...
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Kolyma Tales
''Kolyma Tales'' or ''Kolyma Stories'' (, ''Kolymskiye rasskazy'') is the name given to six collections of short stories by Russian author Varlam Shalamov, about labour camp life in the Soviet Union. Most stories are documentaries and reflect the personal experience by Shalamov. He began working on this book in 1954 and continued until 1973. The book is considered Shalamov's ''magnum opus'' as a writer and one of the important works of Russian literature#20th century, Russian 20th-century literature. The collections of stories are titled ''Kolyma Tales'', ''The Left Bank'', ''The Virtuoso Shovelman'' (or ''The Spade Artist''), ''Essays on the Criminal World'', ''Resurrection of the Larch'', and ''The Glove, or, Kolyma Stories III''. Background Shalamov was born in 1907 and was arrested in 1929 while he was a student at Moscow University for attempting to publish Lenin's Testament. He was sentenced to three years in Vishera, a satellite of the extensive labour camp system centere ...
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Gogol
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; ; (; () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright of Ukrainian origin. Gogol used the grotesque in his writings, for example, in his works " The Nose", " Viy", "The Overcoat", and " Nevsky Prospekt". These stories, and others such as " Diary of a Madman", have also been noted for their proto-surrealist qualities. According to Viktor Shklovsky, Gogol used the technique of defamiliarization when a writer presents common things in an unfamiliar or strange way so that the reader can gain new perspectives and see the world differently. His early works, such as '' Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka'', were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore. His later writing satirised political corruption in contemporary Russia (''The Government Inspector'', '' Dead Souls''), although Gogol also enjoyed the patronage of Tsar Nicholas I who liked his work. The novel '' Taras Bulba'' (1835), the play ''Marriage'' (1842) ...
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Dead Souls
''Dead Souls'' ( , pre-reform spelling: ) is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. The novel chronicles the travels and adventures of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov and the people whom he encounters. These people typify the Russian middle aristocracy of the time. Gogol himself saw his work as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book characterised it as a "poem in prose". Gogol intended the novel to be the first part of a three-volume work, but burned the manuscript of the second part shortly before his death. Modern editions of ''Dead Souls'' include what survives from Part Two, as reconstructed by editors from Gogol's notebooks. Although the novel ends in mid-sentence (like Sterne's ''Sentimental Journey''), it is regarded by some as complete in the extant form. Characterization The original title, as shown on the illustration (cover page), was "The Wanderings of Chichikov, or Dead Souls. ''Po ...
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Literary Review
''Literary Review'' is a British literary magazine founded in 1979 by Anne Smith, then head of the Department of English at the University of Edinburgh. Its offices are on Lexington Street in Soho. The magazine was edited for fourteen years by veteran journalist Auberon Waugh. The current editor is Nancy Sladek. The magazine reviews a wide range of published books, including fiction, history, politics, biography and travel, and additionally prints new fiction. It is also known for the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award that it has run since 1993. Bad Sex in Fiction Award Each year since 1993, ''Literary Review'' has presented the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award to the author it deems to have produced the worst description of a sex scene in a novel. The award is symbolically presented in the form of what has been described as a "semi-abstract trophy representing sex in the 1950s", depicting a naked woman draped over an open book. The award was established by Rhoda Koenig, a lite ...
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