MOVIE 3 - APR 23, 2025 - WED
LOVELESS
Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev
Released in 2017, it´s a disturbing family drama set in contemporary Russia. Zhenya and Boris are divorcing, each already involved with new partners and eager to sever ties with one another. Caught in the middle of the fight is their 12-year-old son, Alyosha, unwanted and absorbing the cruelty of his situation.
One day, Alyosha disappears. So the estranged couple is forced into an uneasy alliance to search for him. What unfolds isn´t just a search, but a penetrating look into their lives hollowed out by narcissism, consumerism, and emotional neglect.
Zvyagintsev´s lens mirror the moral tragedy of his characters as winter looms over every frame, and between them silence often speaks louder than words. Loveless was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes.
Book 95 - MAR 23, 2025 - SUN
LAZARUS
Released in 1906, it´s a supernatural return-of-the-living-dead short story about the biblical Lazarus, who is resurrected by Jesus after three days in the tomb. But he doesn´t return the same man, his empty and otherworldly eyes scare people away, as they sense he has brought from death the knowledge of something too terrible to bear.
Noblemen, warriors, and also beggars seek to test their courage against the gaze of Lazarus, but in his presence they become paralyzed in horror, as if life itself begins to lose its meaning in the darkness of his look. As he wanders, his silence speaks louder than words and mirrors the abyss that lies beyond earthly existence.
Leonid Andreyev´s Lazarus is a timeless and haunting meditation on the human condition. His skepticism regarding Christian teachings is depicted by his Lazarus, who comes back to wreak havoc upon and bring death to the living.
Book 87 - MAR 15, 2025 - SAT
THE TIME OF WOMEN
In Leningrad in the 1960s, a factory worker and single mother, Antonina, her mute daughter, Suzanna, and three elderly women share a communal apartment. In a society where the state dictates every aspect of life, Antonina is diagnosed with a terminal illness and, in order to secure a future for Suzanna, entrusts her to the three women.
Navigating daily hardships, but building a domestic haven in a time of deep political repression, the old ladies pass down secretly to Suzanna personal stories - from serfdom to the Revolution to WW II - and wisdom. And through their eyes is revealed a tender yet haunting image of life in Soviet Russia.
In this historical novel, Elena Chizhova explores themes of love, female resilience in times of adversity, intergenerational bonds, and the quiet defiance of those who endured Soviet oppression.
Book 79 - MAR 07, 2025 - FRI
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Released in twelve monthly parts during 1866 in a literary journal, this novel is about the moral pain of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished former student in Saint Petersburg who plans to kill an unscrupulous moneylender, an old woman who stores money and valuable objects in her flat.
He theorises that certain crimes are justifiable, as her cash could free him from poverty, so he would perform great deeds. But once it´s done, he starts struggling with paranoia, anguish, and remorse, wrestling with his conscience and having debates with characters like the smart detective Porfiry Petrovich and the ruthless Svidrigailov.
Dostoyevsky delves into questions about justice, good and evil, guilt, and spiritual redemption. With its gripping narrative, psychological depth, and exploration of existential dilemmas, this novel is often cited as one of the supreme achievements in world literature.
Book 71 - FEB 27, 2025 - THU
THERE ONCE LIVED A GIRL WHO SEDUCED HER SISTER`S HUSBAND, AND HE HANGED HIMSELF
Published in English in 2013, these Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s love stories began appearing in Russian in the early 1970s, with wider recognition in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Unlike the idealized romances of traditional literature, this book depicts love in prosaic but also sublime ways: one-night stands in communal apartments, awkward encounters, office affairs, schoolgirl crushes, couples running away to get married, tentative courtships, and rampant infidelity. Petrushevskaya’s prose combines unsentimental storytelling with a deep understanding of human suffering.
Setting the tone for the book, the title reflects the bleak emotions of its characters, ordinary people trapped in suffocating relationships, yearning for connection and meaning in their lives amid the scarcity and hardship that defined Soviet and early post-Soviet Russia.
Book 63 - FEB 19, 2025 - WED
Published in 1862, this novel revolves around Bazarov, a young man liberated from old conformities and at odds with the previous generation. As a nihilist, he doesn´t bow to authority nor accepts any principle on faith, dismissing art, romanticism, and sentimentality in favor of materialism and scientific rationalism. But his views are ultimately challenged by his own emotions and experiences, revealing the complexities of human nature.
One of the most acclaimed Russian classics, this book also depicts a generational conflict between aristocrats and radicals that characterized the Russian political landscape in the 19th century. Bazarov has been hailed as the first Bolshevik in literature. The polarizing reception of the novel forced Turgenev to leave Russia.
Fathers and Sons was the first Russian work to gain prominence in the West, followed by Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. This 2023 translation is the first to draw on Turgenev's manuscript, which only came to light in 1988.
Book 55 - FEB 11, 2025 - TUE
Sasha "Sankya" Tishin and his friends belong to a generation stuck between Soviet Union, which they don´t remember, and capitalist Russia, whose promises of opportunity remain out of reach for most.
Raised in a small village, Sasha moves to Moscow, where he joins a nationalist movement aimed at building a better country by tearing down the existing one. As protests turn to violence, he must confront the line between revolution and self-destruction in the hands of the police.
Published in 2006, Prilepin´s first novel captures the disillusionment of a generation in a compelling exploration of youth political rebellion, making him one of the most popular writers in Russia today.
Netbrics.com neither shares nor assumes responsibility for the author's opinions expressed in this book.
Book 47 - FEB 03, 2025 - MON
Set in Moscow in the early 1990s, during the transition of Russia from communism to capitalism, Homo Zapiens (originally published in Russian under the title "Generation P") follows Babylen Tatarsky, a young man lost in the chaos of the post-Soviet world who finds out his true talent: developing Russian versions of western advertisements.
In a newly opened huge consumer market, how to sell things to a generation that grew up with just one type of each product? Tatarsky takes a job in an advertising agency and have a successful career, which leads him into a world of public-opinion manipulators, gangsters, drug trips, and even the spirit of Che Guevera, who, by a way of a Ouija board, tells him how consumers behave in a culture now defined by material possessions and self-indulgence.
Book 39 - Jan 26, 2025 - SUN
A HERO OF OUR TIME
Published in 1840 and set in the Caucasus during the 1830s, it´s about Pechorin, a cynical and charismatic officer who manipulates people, seduces women with coldness, and engages in reckless duels. He embodies the “superfluous man” archetype: an intelligent and talented individual who is alienated from society and trapped in a cycle of boredom and self-sabotage, a disillusioned anti-hero.
In this unconventional novel structured in five separate yet interlinked stories, Lermontov blends adventure, existential introspection, social critique, and the tensions between Russian imperial ambitions and the wild frontier. The name Pechorin is drawn from the Pechora River, as a homage to Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, named after the Onega River.
Book 31 - Jan 18, 2025 - SAT
Blue Lard is one of the most controversial and celebrated books published in contemporary Russia. Denounced as an abomination upon its 1999 release, it provoked such outrage that an angry crowd gathered outside the Bolshoi Theater, throwing shredded copies of his books into a giant papier-mâché toilet.
It begins in a futuristic laboratory where genetic scientists speak in a dialect of Russian mixed with Chinese. They clone famous Russian writers, who are then asked to produce texts in the style of their originals. The goal isn´t the texts themselves but the blue lard that collects in their backs as they write. This substance is to be used to power reactors on the moon, but a sect of nationalists steal the blue lard to send it back in time to an alternate version of the Soviet Union on the margins of a Europe conquered by a long-haired Hitler with the ability to shoot electricity from his hands. What will come of this blue lard? Who will finally make use of its mysterious powers?
Sorokin creates a grotesque, havoc-making, haunting, and yet compelling distopia, and Max Lawton’s translation, the first into English, captures the soul of the book.
BOOK 23 - JAN 10, 2025 - FRI
In the political, economic, and social chaos of early-1990s Russia, the wife and stepdaughter of a paralyzed veteran conceal the Soviet Union’s collapse from him to keep him alive and his pension. In order to create a world that doesn´t change, the stepdaughter Marina hangs Brezhnev’s portrait on the wall, edits the Pravda articles read to her stepfather, and even uses her media connections to cobble together entire newscasts of events that never happened.
Meanwhile, her mother Nina can barely navigate the bewildering new world outside. As Marina is caught up in a local election campaign that gets out of hand, Nina discovers that her husband has an unexpected plan to end his ordeal.
Slavnikova´s novel offers a dark vision of the madness of the post-Soviet world and the trauma it engedered.
BOOK 18 - JAN 05, 2025 - SUN
Completed in the 1930s but published posthumously, in a censored version in 1966 and uncut only in 1973 in Germany, this supernatural novel has become one of the most beloved and enigmatic works of 20th-century literature.
It has two settings. First Moscow during the 1930s, with two intertwining storylines: the arrival of the Devil, disguised as a foreigner named Woland, and the love story between the Master, a writer, and his muse, Margarita. While the Devil and his entourage inflict chaos and destruction in Moscow, the Master and Margarita's transcendent love takes the reader on a compelling journey. The second setting is Jerusalem, the Pontius Pilate's trial of Yeshua Ha-Notsri (Jesus of Nazareth, as the Roman recognizes an affinity with Yeshua and reluctantly acquiesces to his crucifixion.
In a 2012 documentary, Mick Jagger said the lyrics of Sympathy for the Devil were inspired by Baudelaire and mainly Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (which had just appeared in English translation in 1967).
BOOK 13 - DEC 31, 2024 - Tue
Set in 15th-century Russia, a time of recurring epidemics, a young healer, skilled in the art of herbs and remedies, finds himself overcome with grief and guilt when he fails to save his beloved ones.
Leaving behind his village, his possessions, and even his name, he sets out on a quest for redemption. But this is no ordinary journey: wandering across a plague-ridden Europe, offering his healing powers to all in need, he travels through different cities and countries. He eventually reaches Jerusalem, only to find out his greatest challenge is yet to come.
From one of Russia´s most acclaimed contemporary novelists, Laurus is about the eternal themes of love, loss, self-sacrifice, and faith.
BOOK 8 - DEC 26, 2024 - Thu
Set in rural Dagestan, Bride and Groom is a tumultuous love story. It follows Marat and Patya, two young city-dwellers whose paths cross when they return to their families in their native village. As they navigate the weight of family expectations and religious tensions, their love is tested at every turn.
Even as obstacles threaten to tear them apart, fate seems determined to bind them together until the end. Alisa Ganieva´s novel offers a sharp exploration of tradition, family and gender relations, and religion in Dagestan, Russia, shedding light on the complexities of young love in a world bound by deep-rooted customs.
BOOK 3 - DEC 21, 2024 - Sat
Zuleikha (in Russian: Зулейха открывает глаза, which means Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes), published in 2015, describes the life of a woman exiled in Siberia from 1930 to 1946.
She was a dutiful wife, resigning herself to brutal treatment at the hands of her husband and her despotic mother-in-law. In the aftermath of the revolution, life in her Tatar village seemed untouched, until the day her husband is executed by communist soldiers.
She´s sent to Siberia and forced to leave behind everything she knows. Yet in that harsh wilderness, she begins to build a new life and discovers an inner strength she never knew she had, in order to survive and even flourish in dire circunstances.