Coming of Age in a Complicated Century

• Utgivningsdatum: 2026-10-22
• Mått: 229 x 228 x 19 mm
• Vikt: 523 g
• Format: Inbunden
• Språk: Engelska
• Antal sidor: 262
• Förlag: Academic Studies Press
• ISBN: 9798897835126

• Kapitelböcker

Olga Bukhina is a translator, writer, and children’s literature specialist who has translated over fifty books for children and teens. She is also the author of Life and Death: The Most Important Issues in Children’s Literature (2025).Kelly Herold is a professor at Grinnell College, where she teaches Russian language, literature, and culture. Her scholarly work centers on French and Russian cultural and literary exchange (1770-1830) and contemporary young adult literature in Russia and the United States.Andrea Lanoux is Elizabeth S. Kruidenier ’48 Professor of Slavic Studies at Connecticut College, where she teaches Russian, courses on Slavic cultures, and a first-year seminar on Ukraine. Her research focuses on Russian children’s literature, women in Slavic cultures, and literary canon formation.

“Coming of Age in a Complicated Century is both kaleidoscopic and encyclopedic in conveying how political events shaped the experience of adolescence during the successive eras from the first Russian revolution to the current post-Soviet era. The stories and poetry in the collection include a broad range of genres: memoir, fairy tales, reflection on the Holocaust, short stories, and excerpts from novels. Readers will come away with a deeper understanding of what it means to mature in such a complex culture. Scholars will also find this anthology to be a rich resource, whether they study history, literature, information science, education, or psychology. Put simply: Coming of Age in a Complicated Century is a treasure trove of illuminating gems.“—Roberta Seelinger Trites, Distinguished Professor of English Emerita, Illinois State University“This remarkable anthology traces changing visions of Russian adolescence across a century shaped by revolution, Stalinism, war, perestroika, and the post-Soviet era. Through expertly translated prose and poetry, Coming of Age in a Complicated Century reveals how successive generations of writers imagined, questioned, and reinvented what it meant to come of age in Russia. More than a collection of literary texts, it is a cultural history of growing up under changing political and social orders. An ideal companion to A Hundred Years of Childhood: An Anthology of Russian Writing for Children, 1917–2017, this volume reminds us that coming of age is never only an individual experience, but also a historical and cultural one.“—Larissa Rudova, Yale B. and Lucille D. Griffith Professor in Modern Languages and Professor of Russian, Pomona College“Coming of Age in a Complicated Century is a monumental achievement. It offers English readers access to a century of the most imaginative, gripping, witty, and moving Russian-language writing for adolescents and teenagers—from poetry to fairy tales to psychological prose. It rewards readers with new insights into how Russian adolescents experienced the cataclysms of the twentieth century, from the Stalinist terror to World War II, as well the creeping authoritarianism of Putin’s Russia. Each selection has been expertly translated into lively and engaging language that will appeal to all ages. The introduction is highly informative and lucid. I highly recommend this volume to anyone interested in the literature and culture of adolescence and youth.“—Jenny Kaminer, Director, Davis Humanities Institute, Professor of Russian, University of California, Davis“This remarkable collection perfectly captures how inextricably enmeshed the lives of Soviet and post-Soviet teens have been with their country’s calamitous history.“—Eugene Yelchin, illustrator and writer of books for children and young adults“'Sometimes I feel like I tear holes in space,' says Sash, the narrator of Nina Dashevskaya’s story 'Spatially Challenged.' This lively, engaging anthology of Russian writing for teenagers is full of such firecrackers, moments of surprise and seeing anew. As well as excerpts from classics such as Alexander Grin’s Scarlet Sails and Evgeny Schwartz’s An Ordinary Miracle, there’s an inviting selection of more recent work by authors such as the prose writer Anatoly Aleksin and the poet Marina Boroditskaya. It’s a revelation even if you’re familiar with writing for children in Russian, and a voyage of discovery if you aren’t.“—Catriona Kelly, Honorary Professor of Russian and Soviet Culture, Senior Research Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge University“Coming of Age in a Complicated Century is as timely as it is surprising. This collection is the first to present an informative snapshot of the literary environment that shaped the minds and sensibilities of Soviet and post-Soviet teenagers over the course of one hundred years. It also offers an interesting cultural paradox. Contrary to popular belief, the literary world of the early Soviet teenagers was not populated by stories of industrious Communist comrades but by romantic noblemen, eccentric kings, genies with magical powers, and other mysterious queens of the mountainous underworld. As the collection convincingly demonstrates, the return to realism in this field of literature mostly took place after the collapse of the Soviet Union: tales about the queens of the mountainous underworld were replaced by stories about the Gulag, and genies with their superpowers were pushed aside by secret service officers. Indeed, it was a complicated century, and this volume offers a rare opportunity to experience some of its mesmerizing complexity firsthand.“—Serguei Alex. Oushakine, Professor of Anthropology and Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University

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