Vladimir Sorokin’s Discourses

Dirk Uffelmann (PhD Konstanz, 1999; postdoctoral lecturing qualification Bremen, 2005) is Professor of East and West Slavic Literatures at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Hesse, Germany. He is the author of Russian Culturosophy (1999) and The Humiliated Christ—Metaphors and Metonymies in Russian Culture and Literature (2010), both in German, and Polish Postcolonial Literature (forthcoming, in Polish). He coedited fourteen volumes (in English, German, and Russian), including Vladimir Sorokin’s Languages (2013), the journal Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie, and the book series Postcolonial Perspectives on Eastern Europe and Polonistik im Kontext. He has published over 120 articles on Russian, Polish, Czech, and Ukrainian literature, philosophy, religion, migration, masculinity, and internet studies.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsA Note on Transliteration, Translation, and ReferencingDisclaimer1. Introduction: The Late Soviet Union and Moscow’s Artistic Underground2. The Queue and Collective Speech            3. The Normand Socialist Realism4. Marina’s Thirtieth Love and Dissident Narratives5. A Novel and Classical Russian Literature6. A Month in Dachau and Entangled Totalitarianisms7. Sorokin’s New Media Strategies and Civic Position in Post-Soviet Russia8. Blue Lard and Pulp Fiction9. Ice and Esoteric Fanaticism—a New Sorokin?10. Day of the Oprichnik and Political (Anti-)Utopias11. The Blizzard and Self-References of a Meta-Classic12. Manaraga and Reactionary Anti-Globalism13. Discontinuity in Continuity: ProspectsBibliographySorokin’s Works in English TranslationSorokin’s Works in RussianSignificant Texts in Other LanguagesResearch and Other Literature

“This volume, the second entry in Academic Studies Press’s newly launched series Companions to Russian Literature, makes admirably clear the stakes of Vladimir Sorokin’s writing, his major interventions, and the historical currents that have changed him from an underground Soviet writer publishing in the West to a ‘classic in his lifetime’ (prizhiznennyi klassik) who addresses his Russian audience from Germany. … Uffelmann’s readings are persuasive and balanced throughout; I particularly appreciated his remarks on the specular intertwining of Stalinist and Hitlerian totalitarianisms, Sorokin’s running association with Tolstoy, and the important if always contingent opposition of ‘victim’ to ‘perpetrator’ texts.”—Jacob Emery, Indiana University, Bloomington, Russian Review