In this continuation of Anna Karenina's legacy, Russa simmers on the brink of change and the stories long kept secret finally come to light.
In this continuation of Anna Karenina’s legacy, Russia simmers on the brink of change and the stories that have long been kept secret finally come to light.
Saint Petersburg, 1905. Behind the gates of the Karenin Palace, Sergei, son of Anna Karenina, meets Tolstoy in his dreams and finds reminders of his mother everywhere: the vivid portrait that the tsar intends to acquire and the opium-infused manuscripts Anna wrote just before her death, which open a trapdoor to a wild feminist fairy tale. Across the city, Clementine, an anarchist seamstress, and Father Gapon, the charismatic leader of the proletariat, plan protests that embroil the downstairs members of the Karenin household in their plots and tip the country ever closer to revolution. Boullosa tells a polyphonic and subversive tale of the Russian revolution through the lens of Tolstoy’s most beloved work.
Praise for Carmen Boullosa
“Carmen Boullosa writes with a heart-stopping command of language.” —Alma Guillermoprieto
“A cross between Gabriel Garcia Marquez and W. G. Sebald.” —El Pais
“This book occupies a Borgesian tradition in which possible and impossible exist simultaneously in one text.” —John Trefry, Full Stop
“[Boullosa] is witty, wacky, iconoclastic, post-modern, and thoroughly original.” —The Modern Novel
“Read Boullosa because she is a masterful commander of fantastic language.” —Words Without Borders
“Mexico's greatest woman writer.” —Roberto Bolaño
“A luminous writer . . . Boullosa is a masterful spinner of the fantastic.” —Miami Herald
"Utterly entertaining—a comic tour de force. I loved the book and think it deserves a very wide readership." —Philip Lopate
“Brutal, poetic, hilarious and humane...a masterly crafted tale.” —Sjón
“A lucid translation from the Spanish by Samantha Schnee. . . . [Boullosa's] tale, loosely based on the Mexican invasion of the US known as the ‘Cortina troubles’, evok[es] a history that couldn’t be more relevant to today’s immigration battles in the US.” —Jane Ciabattari, BBC
