{"title":"Ludmilla Petrushevskaya","description":"Ludmilla Petrushevskaya was born in 1938 in Moscow, where she still lives. She is the author of more than fifteen volumes of prose, including the New York Times bestseller There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales, which won a World Fantasy Award and was one of New York magazine's Ten Best Books of the Year and one of NPR's Five Best Works of Foreign Fiction; There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories; and There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In: Three Novellas About Family. A singular force in modern Russian fiction, she is also a playwright whose work has been staged by leading theater companies all over the world. In 2002 she received Russia's most prestigious prize, The Triumph, for lifetime achievement.","products":[{"product_id":"the-girl-from-the-metropol-hotel-growing-up-in-communist-russia-paperback","title":"The Girl from the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFinalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe prizewinning memoir of one of the world's great writers, about coming of age \u003cb\u003eas an enemy of the people \u003c\/b\u003eand finding her voice in Stalinist Russia \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Born across the street from the Kremlin in the opulent Metropol Hotel--the setting of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling novel \u003ci\u003eA Gentleman in Moscow \u003c\/i\u003eby Amor Towles--Ludmilla Petrushevskaya grew up in a family of Bolshevik intellectuals who were reduced in the wake of the Russian Revolution to waiting in bread lines. In \u003ci\u003eThe Girl from the Metropol Hotel\u003c\/i\u003e, her prizewinning memoir, she recounts her childhood of extreme deprivation--of wandering the streets like a young Edith Piaf, singing for alms, and living by her wits like Oliver Twist, a diminutive figure far removed from the heights she would attain as an internationally celebrated writer. As she unravels the threads of her itinerant upbringing--of feigned orphandom, of sleeping in freight cars and beneath the dining tables of communal apartments, of the fugitive pleasures of scraps of food--we see, both in her remarkable lack of self-pity and in the two dozen photographs throughout the text, her feral instinct and the crucible in which her gift for giving voice to a nation of survivors was forged. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"From heartrending facts Petrushevskaya concocts a humorous and lyrical account of the toughest childhood and youth imaginable. . . . It [belongs] alongside the classic stories of humanity's beloved plucky child heroes: Edith Piaf, Charlie Chaplin, the Artful Dodger, Gavroche, David Copperfield. . . . The child is irresistible and so is the adult narrator who creates a poignant portrait from the rags and riches of her memory.\" --\u003cb\u003eAnna Summers, from the Introduction\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51365576507615,"sku":"9780143129974","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/Dc2SrC4Hhe9780143129974.webp?v=1789066470"},{"product_id":"there-once-lived-a-girl-who-seduced-her-sisters-husband-and-he-hanged-himself-love-stories-paperback","title":"There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eLove stories, with a twist, by Russia's preeminent contemporary fiction writer--the author of the prizewinning memoir about growing up in Stalinist Russia, \u003ci\u003eThe Girl from the Metropol Hotel\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e By turns sly and sweet, burlesque and heartbreaking, these realist fables of women looking for love are the stories that Ludmilla Petrushevskaya--who has been compared to Chekhov, Tolstoy, Beckett, Poe, Angela Carter, and even Stephen King--is best known for in Russia. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Here are attempts at human connection, both depraved and sublime, by people across the life span: one-night stands in communal apartments, poignantly awkward couplings, office trysts, schoolgirl crushes, elopements, tentative courtships, and rampant infidelity, shot through with lurid violence, romantic illusion, and surprising tenderness. With the satirical eye of Cindy Sherman, Petrushevskaya blends macabre spectacle with transformative moments of grace and shows just why she is Russia's preeminent contemporary fiction writer.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51369192128735,"sku":"9780143121527","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/lQC_sfJNAw9780143121527.webp?v=1789139318"},{"product_id":"there-once-lived-a-mother-who-loved-her-children-until-they-moved-back-in-three-novellas-about-family-paperback","title":"There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In: Three Novellas About Family - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom the author of the prizewinning memoir about growing up in Stalinist Russia, \u003ci\u003eThe Girl from the Metropol Hotel, \u003c\/i\u003et\u003c\/b\u003ehe masterly novellas that established her as one of the greatest living Russian writers--including a new translation of the modern classic \u003ci\u003eThe Time Is Night \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Love them,­ they'll torture you; don't love them, ­they'll leave you anyway.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e After her work was suppressed for many years, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya won wide recognition for capturing the experiences of everyday Russians with profound pathos and mordant wit. Among her most famous and controversial works, these three novellas--\u003ci\u003eThe Time Is Night, Chocolates with Liqueur \u003c\/i\u003e(inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's \"The Cask of Amontillado\"), and \u003ci\u003eAmong Friends\u003c\/i\u003e--are modern classics that breathe new life into Tolstoy's famous dictum, \"All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.\" Together they confirm the genius of an author with a gift for turning adversity into art.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51369193308383,"sku":"9780143121664","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/SoIJ5hdF9d9780143121664.webp?v=1789139321"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/ludmilla-petrushevskaya.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}