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Rapture: A Novel (Russian Library) by [Iliazd]

Rapture: A Novel (Russian Library) Kindle Edition

by Iliazd (Author), Thomas Kitson (Translator)

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The draft dodger Laurence yearns to take control of his destiny. Having fled to the highlands, he asserts his independence by committing a string of robberies and murders. Then he happens upon Ivlita, a beautiful young woman trapped in an intricately carved mahogany house. Laurence does not hesitate to take her as well. Determined to drape his young bride in jewels, he plots ever more daring heists. Yet when Laurence finds himself casting bombs alongside members of a revolutionary cell, he must again ask: is he a free man or a pawn of history?

Rapture is a fast-paced adventure-romance and a literary treat of the highest order. With a deceptively light hand, Iliazd entertains questions that James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Thomas Mann once faced. How does the individual balance freedom and necessity, love and death, creativity and sterility? What is the role of violence in human history and culture? How does language both comfort and fail us in our postwar, post-Christian world?

Censored for decades in the Soviet Union, Rapture was nearly lost to Russian and Western audiences. This translation rescues Laurence's surreal journey from the oblivion he, too, faces as he tries to outrun fate.

Length: 304 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Page Flip: Enabled

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Product details

File Size: 708 KB
Print Length: 304 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0231180837
Publisher: Columbia University Press; Translation edition (May 16, 2017)
Publication Date: May 16, 2017
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B06Y4CQ6NC
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

X-Ray:

Not Enabled

Word Wise: Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Screen Reader: Supported

Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,337,241 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #472 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Russian
- #628 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Short Stories > World Literature
- #846 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Russian

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Kalankit Haseena

This book is a satire about Georgian people/cutoms/politics. However ...

April 7, 2018

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This book is a satire about Georgian people/cutoms/politics. However, it is also full of rich description, and works as a story (although the story is preposterous). The ending is ambiguous. Basically, the story doesn't go anywhere, but the path is rewarding.

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A remarkable novel

June 25, 2017

Format: Paperback

It would be easy to dismiss as esoteric a book said to be “a parable mythologizing the Russian avant-garde,” by an author who was once called a “grammatical revolutionary and murderer of words.” Just a bit of experimental prose by some Georgian-Russian leftist who associated with Futurists and Dadaists, who invented everythingism and beyonsense, and who later in life designed beautiful books with Picasso and Miro.

But that would be a mistake, for Iliazd’s (birth name Ilia Zdanevich) rediscovered and newly translated work is a gem.

Plot-wise, there may not be much special to draw one to this work (murder, terrorism, a Caucasian adventure, love, betrayal, death), but the point here is not the story line and characters, but the words with which they are created, the subtexts and literary references, the mystical bridging of the human and inhuman.

With a book like this, you can dip in at any point and be carried away by Iliazd’s poetry in prose:

The moon caught fire and dressed the forest in motley. Nothing was audible except the fountain nearby, and you couldn’t have heard anything anyway. Needles gave way to leaves, pitch to the odor of humus.

...

He had grown up and into his manhood. His dark beard was not distinct from his face, dusty and sunburned. Of his splendid attire, only rags remained. His boots were torn and only his rifle looked new. But there was such valor and magnificence in the whole setup that those in the tavern stood up and doffed their hats.

And yet the imagery and characters draw you unwittingly into the plot, and you find there is something there after all, something so cinematic that even Nabokov is said to have cribbed bits from the work.

In short, there are many levels and layers in this remarkable, short novel. And all of them deserve a close look.

As reviewed in Russian Life

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