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Igor Pomerantsev

10,00 

Oleg Fedorov's Publishing House, 2023.

ISBN 978-617-8082-68-0

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Autor

Игорь Померанцев

Igor Pomerantsev

Igor Pomerantsev is a shortlisted finalist for the Dar Prize 2025. Poet, writer, radio dramatist, columnist for the BBC and Radio Liberty.

Expert opinions

Михаил Эдельштейн

Mikhail Edelstein

Literary scholar

“Igor Pomerantsev's book consists of texts of different genre nature. There are traditional essays, memoir fragments, instant sketches from nature, and even speeches “on occasion”. But all of this is “poet's prose”. Whatever the author speaks about and in whatever form, he follows the language, obeys its logic, its plasticity. As in another book about contemporary Ukraine, the diaries of Maria Galina, one of the most important techniques for the author is the technique of contrast. A step away from the war, from memorial services and newspaper obituaries - and: “I enter a restaurant drowned in greenery, not a restaurant, but a branch of paradise. There are two kinds of wine on the menu: Pinot Grigio and Chianti. Leonard Cohen sings idly of bottomless kisses.” However, contrast is contrast, but Cohen's The Thousand Kisses Deep is a deeply tragic thing”.
Николай Александров

Nikolai Aleksandrov

Cultural and literary scholar, essayist, journalist

“Pomerantsev's prose is that rare case when from the first paragraph, from the first sentence you realize - this is the real thing. This is how noble wine convinces, and by the way, Pomerantsev writes about wine with knowledge and pleasure. His texts give rise to a feeling of lightness and freedom, which are the properties of true culture, which, in turn, is based on curiosity, and curiosity is connected with diversity. That is, in fact, culture first of all presupposes and affirms the diversity of the world. The world, in fact, is alive with it. Igor Pomerantsev's essays freely echo languages and literatures, different countries and cities, customs and habits, and they are read in the same way as drinking Eiswein, which breathes, in the words of one of the characters in this book, “the promise of paradise”.

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