The Big Green Tent
A Novel
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2.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The Big Green Tent epitomizes what we think of when we imagine the classic Russian novel.
With epic breadth and intimate detail, Ludmila Ulitskaya’s remarkable work tells the story of three school friends who meet in Moscow in the 1950s and go on to embody the heroism, folly, compromise, and hope of the Soviet dissident experience. These three boys—an orphaned poet; a gifted, fragile pianist; and a budding photographer with a talent for collecting secrets—struggle to reach adulthood in a society where their heroes have been censored and exiled.
Rich with love stories, intrigue, and a cast of dissenters and spies, The Big Green Tent offers a panoramic survey of life after Stalin and a dramatic investigation into the prospects for individual integrity in a society defined by the KGB. Each of the central characters seeks to transcend an oppressive regime through art, a love of Russian literature, and activism. And each of them ends up face-to-face with a secret police that is highly skilled at fomenting paranoia, division, and self-betrayal. A man and his wife each become collaborators, without the other knowing; an artist is chased into the woods, where he remains in hiding for four years; a researcher is forced to deem a patient insane, damning him to torture in a psychiatric ward.
Ludmila Ulitskaya’s novel belongs to the tradition of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Pasternak: it is a work consumed with politics, love, and belief—and a revelation of life in dark times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The latest from Ulitskaya (The Funeral Party) is a massive, swirling epic, stretching across half a century and chronicling the lives and adventures of three artistic childhood friends: Ilya, the photographer; Mikha, the poet and literature hound; and Sanya, the musician. The trio, considered outcasts by their peers, grow up in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and find common ground as members of the "Lovers of Russian Letters" group, founded by their teacher, Victor Yulievich, a WWII veteran. As they age, they drift in and out of each others' lives. Ilya turns radical and begins a secret bookbinding business, trafficking illegal texts into the U.S.S.R. Mikha, hoping to do good, finds himself in trouble with the law after he attempts to help exiled writers. And Sanya, after an injury to his hand, loses his drive to play piano. Ulitskaya weaves narratives both brief and prolonged into these stories, introducing, among others, Olga, Ilya's second wife, and her two lifelong chums, Tamara brilliant, destined for medical work and Galya, who ends up wed to a man investigating Ilya's unlawful activities. The author crafts an enthralling world, encapsulating many characters' entire lives succinctly before slowly revealing biographical details in later chapters. The effect is mazelike, with the story jumping back and forth on various time lines. The prose is dense, but readers will come away wholly satisfied.
