BOARDING SCHOOL STORIES

Riva Evstifeeva

10,00 

Publisher Éditions Tourgueneff, 2023

ISBN, 2958693201, 9782958693206

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Autor

Рива Евстифеева

Riva Evstifeeva

Riva Evstifeeva is a shortlisted finalist for the Dar Prize 2025. She is a specialist in Russian literature and comparative literature, mainly in the reception of literary texts in Europe and Russia in the New Age and subsequent eras.

Expert opinions

Николай Александров

Nikolai Aleksandrov

Cultural and literary scholar, essayist, journalist

“The unexpressed Soviet orphanhood, homelessness, homelessness combined with strict supervision, loneliness, and the boarding school dormitory, which, although lighter than the orphanage, is typologically the same. A familiar Soviet longing that eats away at a person. But Riva Yevstifeeva's picturesqueness, sincere and ironic tone at the same time are remarkable, overcoming this gray heaviness based on the well-known principle of “to supervise and punish”.
Михаил Эдельштейн

Mikhail Edelstein

Literary scholar

“In studies of the genesis of Putin's Russia, references to the numerous “institutions of violence” that accompany Russians from childhood to old age (prison, army, etc.) are repeatedly mentioned. In this context, Riva Yevstifeeva's book can be seen as a testimony to another such institution that the author went through - a boarding school for teenagers. But in fact, I would be sorry if this book were to be taken as mere testimony or to be ascribed to the fashionable “trauma literature”. What happens with Evstifeeva's book is what once happened with Rubén González Gallego's White on Black. By means of accurately found intonation and masterful selection of details, the author of scanty documentary sketches achieves a truly artistic expression. This is the very case when non-fiction finds itself among novels and short stories not only because of the value of factuality, but also according to aesthetic criteria”.

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