A profound and multi-faceted analysis, a deep insight into Russian culture. In light of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, the importance of engaging with the discussions and conclusions initiated by Kaminer's book becomes ever more necessary.(International Research Society for Children's Literature) For students and scholars of youth studies, this book is an essential starting place. The lucid and succinct descriptions of film and drama, in particular the cinematic oeuvre of Anna Melikian, understudied until now, nestle these contemporary works neatly within the Slavic Studies field through approaches that continue to be of interest.(Russian Review) Jenny Kaminer's Haunted Dreams provides an excellent examination of contemporary Russian cultural productions featuring young people across diverse popular genres. She reinforces her discussions with sophisticated presentations of historical contexts and comparative analyses of primary sources.(International Research Society for Children's Literature) Jenny Kaminer's excellent new book, Haunted Dreams, turns our attention to fantasies of adolescence in post-Soviet culture by assembling an archive of literature, film, drama, and television in which the adolescent—that awkward state between childhood and adulthood—is made visible as a cultural construct.(Slavic Review) With elegant, engaging prose, Haunted Dreams is a major academic accomplishment and a valuable reference point for subsequent studies of post-Soviet, and indeed global, adolescence.(Modern Language Quarterly) Haunted Dreams is not only an important foundational book on literary, cinematic, and dramatic responses to adolescence in Russia, it is also timely. [...] This book is singularly well written and argued, as well as eminently readable.(Canadian Slavonic Papers)
