Guest of the ilb 2003
Tatjana Tolstaja was born in St. Petersburg
(Leningrad), Russia, in 1951. She studied Classical Philology in
Leningrad. Thereafter she briefly worked as an editor before going to
Moscow to work as an author. Her first collection of stories (1987;
German “Stelldichein mit einem Vogel,” 1989) was a great literary
success which turned her into the Soviet Union’s most well-known author
overnight. In 1989 she left Moscow and went to the U.S. In the 90s she
taught at Princeton University and at Skidmore College, both in New
Jersey, while writing numerous essays on Russian literature and
politics for magazines like “The New York Review of Books.” Some of the
essays were critical, others humorous. Twenty of these essayistic texts
were published in the U.S. under the title “Pushkin’s Children.
Writings on Russia and Russians” in 2003. In 2000 she returned to
Russia. Within a month she completed her first novel “Kys,” which she
had already started to work on 14 years earlier in 1986.
In “Kys” Tatjana Tolstaja sketches the dismal, bizarre world of a
future Russia. This realm is ruled by a dictator and populated by
misshapen people and mutations, who live in fear of the cruel creature
Kys. Owning books is not allowed, but for the protagonist Benedikt
reading is a drug. Tolstaja unfolds the fairytale-like magic of her
narrative technique, refers to Russian narrative traditions, plays with
old Cyrillic letters, invents new words, indulges in literary
allusions, and in addition to Gogol, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Pushkin also
cites other great writers of world literature. “I incorporated the
texts into my book which unconsciously came up while I was writing.”
In addition to “Kys” (2003) in German several books of stories have
been published: “Stelldichein mit einem Vogel” (1989), “Sonja” (1991),
and “Und es fiel ein Feuer vom Himmel” (1992). Not only as a writer and
essayist does Tatjana Tolstaja comment critically and ironically on the
state of her country but as an anchorwoman as well.
She lives in Moscow, New York, and St. Petersburg.
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