Routes of Passage: Essays on the Fiction of Vladmir Makanin

Vladimir Makanin impels the Russian tradition at once in two established directions: back to its sympathy for the "little people" in all their social exigencies and forward into a new life fraught with doubt, bad memories (and bad teeth), and yet the need for self assertion and new forms of expression. In terms of fiction, his works, whatever the precise historical contexts, are experimental and philosophical, with stressful lines leading to immediate questions, even about the works themselves and the forceful act of writing "fiction." Long praised by Russia's major critics, including Irina Rodnyanskaya of "Novy Mir" and Natalya Ivanova of "Znamya," as a "living classic" and a perennial favorite writer among the intelligentsia, Makanin remains little known in North America, even among Slavists.

Co-edited by Slavists Byron Lindsey and Tatiana Spektor, this collection of essays with its multiple points of view, scholarly and critical analyses of subtexts, and full bibliography, provides both an introduction to Makanin as one of Russia's most independent contemporary voices and a guide to his genuinely circuitious routes, equally as a writer and a creative witness to Russia's historical tensions in the 20th century. His epic novel "Underground, or a Hero of Our Time," set in the contiguous Soviet/postSoviet period, receives special focus. The critical essays receive valuable augmentation by Makanin's own autobiographical profile and a revealing new interview conducted by St. Petersburg scholar Vladimir Ivantsov.