Lyudmila Ulitskaya

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Template:Short descriptionTemplate:Family name hatnoteTemplate:Infobox writer Lyudmila Evgenyevna Ulitskaya (Template:Langx, born February 21, 1943) is an internationally acclaimed modern Russian novelist and short-story writer who, in 2014, was awarded the prestigious Austrian State Prize for European Literature for her oeuvre. In 2006 she published Daniel Stein, Interpreter (Даниэль Штайн, переводчик), a novel dealing with the Holocaust and the need for reconciliation between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. She won the 2012 Park Kyong-ni Prize.

Biography

Ulitskaya was born in the town of Davlekanovo in Bashkiria but her family moved to Moscow when she was nine months old.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref> In Moscow, her family lived in communal apartments with many other families.<ref name=":0" /> After childhood, she received a degree in genetics from the Moscow State University.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> After university, she worked for two years at the Institute of General Genetics, before she was fired in 1970 for reading and distributing samizdat literature. After this, she didn't work for about nine years. In this time she was married and then had two kids.<ref name=":0" /> Then Ulitskaya began her literary career by joining the Jewish drama theatre as a literary consultant in 1979.<ref name=":0" /> She became the Repertory Director of the Hebrew Theatre of Moscow.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Her first published short fiction appeared in 1990.<ref name=Gessen /> The story of her acclaimed novel Sonechka was first published in Novy Mir in 1992.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite web</ref> In 1993, she published her first novel with Gallimard in France. Her first novel in Russian was published in 1994.<ref name=":0" /> Until 2022, Ulitskaya divided her time between Moscow and Israel.<ref>Andrey Kurkov in: "Das kann ein bisschen mehr Anarchie mitbringen". Ukraine im Gespräch, part 4: Andrej Kurkow im Gespräch mit Katja Petrowskaja, Essay und Diskurs, Deutschlandfunk, 28 December 2014, German</ref> Since 2022, Ulitskaya resides in Berlin, Germany.

Personal life

Ulitskaya's third and current husband, Soviet and Russian sculptor Andrey Nikolaevich Krasulin (b. 1934) in July 2014

Ulitskaya's parents were both involved in science: her mother was a biochemist and her father was an engineer.<ref name=":0" /> She was engaged to an American man who died in a car accident before they were married.<ref name=":0" /> Throughout her life, she has learned German, French, and English, but has said herself that she doesn't know any of them well.<ref name=":0" /> She has mentioned that she tends to work in Italy, at an apartment she owns, but she lived in Moscow until 2022.<ref name=":0" />

Lyudmila Ulitskaya was married three times. First husband Yuri Taits. Second husband Mikhail Evgeniev (geneticist, Doctor of Biological Sciences).<ref name=":6">Template:Cite web</ref> They have two sons Aleksey (born 1972; businessman) and Pyotr (born 1975; a jazz musician), one of whom graduated from Columbia University.<ref name=":0" /> For 2024 she is married to the sculptor Andrey Krasulin.<ref name=":7">Template:Cite web</ref>

Fiction

Style

In her fiction, Ulitskaya seemingly describes and observes her characters at an equal distance from each one. Rather than going in for character development or delving into the tortured workings of her characters’ psyches otherwise perceived as the hallmark of Russian writing, Ulitskaya favors capsule descriptions, though she acknowledges that her characters are tortured. Generally speaking, she makes little use of dialogue. Masha Gessen, in her tribute article in The New Yorker in October 2014, finds that Ulitskaya's writing makes for compelling, addictive reading. Gessen reports that she was driven entirely by the desire to learn what happens next.<ref name=Gessen>Masha Gessen, The Weight of Words. One of Russia’s most famous writers confronts the state, in: The New Yorker, 6 October 2014</ref>

Themes

Among her interlinked themes are: the need for religious and racial tolerance; the problem of the intelligentsia in Soviet culture; how women shape new gender roles in society; and everyday life as a literary subject.

Other activity

Lyudmila Ulitskaya on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow in February 2012

Ulitskaya authored two movie scripts produced in the early 1990s: The Liberty Sisters (Сестрички Либерти, 1990) and A Woman for All (Женщина для всех, 1991). She regularly publishes commentary on social issues and is actively involved in philanthropic projects increasing access to literature. In March 2014 Ulitskaya was among the key speakers at the Moscow Anti-War demonstration.

Reception

Ulitskaya's first novella, Sonechka (Сонечка, 1992), and her second, Medea and Her Children (Медея и ее дети, 1996) became extremely popular, and both were shortlisted for the Russian Booker Award, in 1993 and 1997, respectively. She finally won the Russian Booker Prize in 2001 for The Kukotsky Enigma (Казус Кукоцкого, 2001),<ref name=":1" /> and was the first woman to receive the prize.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Her novel Daniel Stein, Interpreter (Даниэль Штайн, переводчик, 2006) was nominated for the Man Booker Prize. Her works have been translated into over 25 languages, including English,<ref name=":1" /> and have received several international and Russian literary awards. The English translation for The Big Green Tent (Зелёный шатёр, 2010) was long-listed for the Best Translated Book Award in Fiction in 2016.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She has an average reader rating of 4.07 on Goodreads.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Political involvement

Because Ulitskaya addresses both religion and politics in her work, she has moved to the forefront of the Russian political debate in recent decades. In 2011 and 2012, during the height of the anti-Putin protests in Russia, she became a board member for the League of Voters. She was also considered a traitor by the administration and was the subject of negative statements in state-owned outlets, such as Isvestia.<ref name="Gessen" /> She is firmly anti-Putin; at a press conference for her book The Big Green Tent (Зелёный шатёр, 2010), she remarked that the country was becoming "Stalinized," something that gave her "a whiff of fear."<ref name=":1" />

However, she is very against the idea of Moscow being a cultural part of Europe,<ref name=":0" /> unlike other anti-Putin dissidents such as Alexei Navalny.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

While Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian billionaire jailed on fraud charges, was incarcerated, he and Ulitskaya wrote each other letters. Ulitskaya maintains that the charges against him were politically motivated and thus "absurd."<ref name=":4">Template:Cite web</ref> Their correspondence was published in a collection titled Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Articles, Dialogues, Interviews<ref name=":5">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=":4" /> along with contributions from other writers such as Boris Strugatsky and Boris Akunin.<ref name=":5" />

On the second day of the Russian war against Ukraine in 2022, Novaya Gazeta published a statement by Ulitskaya, Pain. Fear. Shame.,<ref>Novaya Gazeta had to delete the text from its website due to a new censorship law. However, it is still available, e.g., at the news portal of the Lithuanian public broadcaster LTR: Боль. Страх. Стыд., 2022-02-27. Retrieved 2022-03-09.</ref> strongly condemning the war. She was also among the signatories of an appeal by eminent writers to all Russian speakers to spread the truth about the war inside Russia.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Since March 2022, she has been living in Berlin.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Awards

Lyudmila Ulitskaya as guest of honour at the 2009 16th International Book Festival, Millenáris, Budapest

Bibliography

Novels

Collections

  • Poor Relatives (Бедные родственники, 1993)<ref name="elkost.com">Template:Cite web</ref>
  • Girls (Девочки, 2002)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
  • Childhood Forty-Nine (Детство сорок девять, 2003)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
  • The Queen of Spades (Первые и последние; Literal translation: 'First and Last', 2004)<ref name="elkost.com"/><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
  • The Story about Ignatius the Cat, Fedya the Chimney-Sweep, and the Lonely Mouse (История про кота Игнасия, трубочиста Федю и Одинокую Мышь, 2004)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
  • The Story about old Kulebyakin, Mila the Whining Horse, and her Colt Ravki (История о старике Кулебякине, плаксивой кобыле Миле и жеребёнке Равкине, 2004)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
  • The Story about Antwerpen the Sparrow, Mikheev the Cat, the Aloe Vasya and the centipede Marya Semyonovna with her family (История про воробья Антверпена, кота Михеева, столетника Васю и сороконожку Марью Семёновну с семьёй, 2005)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
  • Discarded Relics (Священный мусор, 2012)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
  • The Body of the Soul (О теле души, 2019)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
  • Paper Theatre: Non-Prose (Бумажный театр: непроза, 2020)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Short stories

Plays and Screenplays

  • Russian Jam and Other Plays (Русское варенье и другое, Moscow, 2005)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
  • Just the Plague (English translation; 1988, 2020)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Online text

References

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