Pu 239 And Other Russian Fantasies

Author : Ken Kalfus
Publisher : Milkweed Editions
ISBN 13 : 1571318224
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies written by Ken Kalfus and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed short story and novella collection by “a virtuoso of the dismal comedy of Soviet life”—and the basis for the HBO film PU-239 (The New York Times). Ken Kalfus traverses a century of Russian history in tales that range from hair-raising to comic to fabulous. The astonishing title story follows a doomed nuclear power plant worker as he attempts to hawk plutonium in Moscow’s black market. In “Budyonnovsk,” a young man hopes that the takeover of his town by Chechen rebels will somehow save his marriage. Set in the 1920s, “Birobidzhan” is the bittersweet story of a Jewish couple journeying to the Soviet Far East, where they intend to establish the modern world’s first Jewish state. The novella, “Peredelkino,” which closes the book, traces the fortunes of a 1960s literary apparatchik whose romantic intrigues inadvertently become political. In these and other stories, Kalfus captures the famously enigmatic Russian psyche. A PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist

Author : Ken Kalfus
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1620400162
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Equilateral written by Ken Kalfus and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Obsessed by a belief that highly evolved beings exist on Mars, a turn-of-the-century British astronomer gets support for a massive project to build a signal that is undermined by malaria-stricken Egyptian laborers and two women who understand the astronomer more than he realizes. By the National Book Award finalist author of A Disorder Peculiar to the Country. 25,000 first printing.

Author : Ken Kalfus
Publisher : Zondervan
ISBN 13 : 0061855944
Total Pages : 373 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Commissariat of Enlightenment written by Ken Kalfus and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia, 1910. Leo Tolstoy lies dying in Astapovo, a remote railway station. Members of the press from around the world have descended upon this sleepy hamlet to record his passing for a public suddenly ravenous for celebrity news. They have been joined by a film company whose cinematographer, Nikolai Gribshin, is capturing the extraordinary scene and learning how to wield his camera as a political tool. At this historic moment he comes across two men -- the scientist, Professor Vorobev, and the revolutionist, Joseph Stalin -- who have radical, mysterious plans for the future. Soon they will accompany him on a long, cold march through an era of brutality and absurdity. The Commissariat of Enlightenment is a mesmerizing novel of ideas that brilliantly links the tragedy and comedy of the Russian Revolution with the global empire of images that occupies our imaginations today.

Author : Ken Kalfus
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0061856347
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Disorder Peculiar to the Country written by Ken Kalfus and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A National Book Award Finalist "The best novel yet about 9/11.... A brilliant new comedy of manners, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country is about the way a conflict takes on a logic and momentum of its own." —Salon “Savagely hilarious.” —Elle Joyce and Marshall each think the other is killed on September 11—and must swallow their disappointment when the other arrives home. As their bitter divorce is further complicated by anthrax scares, suicide bombs, and foreign wars, they suffer, in ways unexpectedly personal and increasingly ludicrous, the many strange ravages of our time. In this astonishing black comedy, Kalfus suggests how our nation’s public calamities have encroached upon our most private illusions.

Author : Юрий Карлович Олеша
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 326 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Envy written by Юрий Карлович Олеша and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the most comprehensive collection in English of Olesha's work. It includes eight stories that have been translated especially for the Anchor edition."--Back cover.

Author : Ken Kalfus
Publisher : Milkweed Editions
ISBN 13 : 1571317732
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book 2 A.M. in Little America written by Ken Kalfus and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Americans flee widespread civil conflict, one young refugee ekes out a living in a suspenseful, darkly comic novel: “An important writer in every sense.” —David Foster Wallace An Esquire “Best Book of Spring 2022” A Literary Hub “Most Anticipated Book of 2022” A San Francisco Chronicle “Most Anticipated Novel of 2022” In the future, sweeping civil disorder has forced America’s young people to flee its borders into an unwelcoming world. One such American is Ron Patterson, who finds himself on distant shores, working as a repairman and sharing a room with other refugees. In an unnamed city wedged between ocean and lush mountainous forest, Ron can almost imagine a stable life for himself. Especially when he makes the first friend he’s had in years—a mysterious migrant named Marlise, who bears a striking resemblance to a onetime classmate. Nearly a decade later—after anti-migrant sentiment has put their whirlwind intimacy and asylum to an end—Ron is living in “Little America,” an enclave of migrants in one of the few countries still willing to accept them. Here, among reminders of his past life, he again begins to feel that he may have found a home. He adopts a stray dog, observes his neighbors, and lands a new repairman job that allows him to move through the city quietly. But this newfound security, too, is quickly jeopardized, as resurgent political divisions threaten the fabric of Little America. Tapped as an informant against the rise of militant gangs and contending with the appearance of a strangely familiar woman, Ron is suddenly on dangerous and uncertain ground. Brimming with mystery, suspense, and Ken Kalfus’s distinctive comic irony, 2 A.M. in Little America poses questions vital to the current moment: What happens when privilege is reversed? Who is watching and why? How do tribalized politics disrupt our ability to distinguish what is true and what is not? This is a story for our time—gripping, unsettling, prescient—by an acclaimed National Book Award finalist. “My favorite book by one of America’s great living writers.” —Jonathan Safran Foer “A provocative dystopian story . . . takes hold of the reader.” —Publishers Weekly “A highly readable, taut novel.” —The New York Times Book Review “One of contemporary literature’s best-kept secrets.” —Esquire

Author : Ken Kalfus
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1620400863
Total Pages : 197 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Coup de Foudre written by Ken Kalfus and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The explosive new collection by the celebrated author of Thirst and PEN/Faulkner Award finalist Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies, Coup de Foudre is the kind of groundbreaking work of literary invention Ken Kalfus's fans have come to expect. The book is anchored by the full text of the provocatively topical title novella that appeared in Harper's, a sometimes farcical, ultimately tragic story about the president of an international lending institution accused of sexually assaulting a housekeeper in a New York hotel. Recalling recent news events with irony and compassion, Kalfus skewers international political gridlock and the hypocrisies of acceptable sexual conduct. In “The Moment They Were Waiting For,” a murderer on death row casts a spell granting the inhabitants of his city the foreknowledge of the dates they will die. In “v. The Large Hadron Collider,” a judge distracted by the faint possibility of an adulterous affair must decide whether to throw out a nuisance lawsuit that raises the even fainter possibility that the entire Earth may be destroyed. “The Un-” is a nostalgic story of a young writer's struggles as he tries to surmount the colossal, heavily guarded wall that apparently separates writers who have been published from those who have not. Varying boldly in theme, setting, and tone, the stories in Coup de Foudre share Kalfus's distinctive humor and intellect, inextricably bound with high literary ambition.

Author : Michael Chabon
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0812993675
Total Pages : 706 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content) written by Michael Chabon and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The epic, beloved novel of two boy geniuses dreaming up superheroes in New York’s Golden Age of comics, now with special bonus material by the author—soon to be a Showtime limited series “It's absolutely gosh-wow, super-colossal—smart, funny, and a continual pleasure to read.”—The Washington Post Book World Named one of the 10 Best Books of the Decade by Entertainment Weekly • Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize A “towering, swash-buckling thrill of a book” (Newsweek), hailed as Chabon’s “magnum opus” (The New York Review of Books), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a triumph of originality, imagination, and storytelling, an exuberant, irresistible novel that begins in New York City in 1939. A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition. From the shared fears, dreams, and desires of two teenage boys, they spin comic book tales of the heroic, fascist-fighting Escapist and the beautiful, mysterious Luna Moth, otherworldly mistress of the night. Climbing from the streets of Brooklyn to the top of the Empire State Building, Joe and Sammy carve out lives, and careers, as vivid as cyan and magenta ink. Spanning continents and eras, this superb book by one of America’s finest writers remains one of the defining novels of our modern American age. Winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award and the New York Society Library Book Award

Author : Edvard Hoem
Publisher : Milkweed Editions
ISBN 13 : 1571319816
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Haymaker in Heaven written by Edvard Hoem and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of Norway’s leading writers, translated into English for the very first time, comes a transatlantic novel of dreams, sacrifice, and transformation set at the turn of the twentieth century. The year is 1874. Nesje is a recent widower with a young son, working as a haymaker on an estate in the town of Molde and steadily clearing his own small holding. Then he meets Serianna—an outsider, looking for work, who takes him fishing and smokes a pipe and is thoroughly unlike anyone he’s met before. Soon the two fall in love and marry, and Nesje begins to dream of a prosperous future. But prosperity is hard to come by. Some Norwegians—including Serianna’s spirited sister, Gjertine—have begun to immigrate to the American West, attracted by the glimmer of land and commerce. One of Nesje’s sons follows, while another moves to the city and becomes a wealthy merchant, and another is adopted by Serianna’s childless brother and sister-in-law. In Norway and in America, however, the turn of the century is approaching: mechanization is superseding skilled labor, the moneyed classes are growing ever more powerful, and sacrifices don’t always deliver what was promised. Haymaker in Heaven is a sprawling saga—drawn from Edvard Hoem’s own family history—and a vivid portrait of two countries at a critical moment of intersection.

Author : Ken Kalfus
Publisher : ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN 13 : 1458719944
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Thirst written by Ken Kalfus and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10-19 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kalfus is most successful when he mixes his different approaches into the original sort of magic realism he creates in the title tale, which concerns an erotically charged encounter between a virginal Irish au pair, Nula, and a Moroccan student, Henri Tatahouine, in Paris. The hallucinatory quality of Henri's account of his life leaves Nula emotionally blistered, as though she had been in the Sahara. The comic, horrifying """"Cats in Space,"""" which tells the tale of a group of kids who use helium balloons to launch a kitten into the air, is similarly effective. Though uneven, Kalfus's collection is ambitious and daring, with smart, fluid prose and an abundance of surprises.