Fashion writers. The best modern books

Text: Alexandra Bazhenova-Sorokina

Illustrations: Dasha Chertanova

THEY SPEAK MUCH MORE ABOUT GREAT WRITERS THAN WOMEN WRITERS- the latter are often associated with literature “for women”. This is, of course, unfair - modern literature would not be itself without outstanding writers. We decided to remember ten of our writing contemporaries, who will probably be read tomorrow and in several decades.

Donna Tartt

Perhaps the most successful intellectual writer of the 21st century, Donna Tartt made a splash around the world with her third novel, The Goldfinch. It turned out that among postmodernity and post-irony there is a place (and there is a need) for an old-fashioned, serious work. Tartt's hefty volumes are selling out quickly: both readers and critics appreciate her for her beautiful language, clever plots, humanism and for the thoughtful slowness with which you read Dickens or George Eliot.

In The Goldfinch, a classic novel of education, based on the tragedy of a boy and his long journey to growing up and finding himself, captivates with both the sophistication of the style and the twists of the plot. This is exactly the case when thinking about a text drags on like a trail - significantly exceeding the time of actually reading.

Joyce Carol Oates

For some time it was customary to make fun of Joyce Carol Oates's performance, but the critics dried up, but the talent of the 78-year-old American did not. Dozens of novels, hundreds of stories and poems, of course, are not of equal size, but there are already articles on this that will help to understand Oates’s existing legacy.

Over the years, few people have been able to talk so consistently and with such subtlety about violence, about sexual and racial inequality, about social problems, showing them not only as “environmental problems,” but as part of the inner life of the individual and, accordingly, as anthropological problems . In Russia, Oates is primarily known for her programmatic novel “The Garden of Earthly Delights” about the struggle between destructive and creative principles in one woman.

Toni Morrison

At eighty-five, Toni Morrison is a living legend, a literary pillar, undeservedly little read in Russia. One of the main authors of American multiculturalism, like no other, claims the title of Marquez USA. She released her latest novel only a year ago, actively lectures and is a loud voice of “black America”, whose comments on the murders of African-American teenagers are no less important for many Western intellectuals than the statements of politicians or pop stars.

In his novels, Morrison talks about the identity of the African-American population of the United States through magical realism. For example, “Beloved” is the story of a woman fleeing slavery and forced to face her own past, which takes on flesh and blood, written in the best traditions of American Gothic. The writer’s texts are structured in such a way that the author’s reflection on human dignity, different types of oppression, myth and love is refracted through the multiple perspectives of the characters.

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya

In modern Russian prose, women play a key role, and it is impossible to list all the important names. However, towering over all of them like a pillar is the Russian word magician Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. The author of novels, plays, short stories, songs, fairy tales that have become memes (Peter the Pig), and the script for the mystical “Tale of Tales” by Norshtein is still actively writing, and also sings, draws and does everything else.

Stories, novels, and the story “Time is Night,” which brought Petrushevskaya her first fame, are really difficult to read, because what makes her prose frightening is not the fantastic component (where it exists at all), but Gogol’s irony and the vitality of the nightmares that occur. However, the oppressive and magical world of Petrushevskaya is attractive, and not only for her compatriots: she managed to achieve recognition both in the post-Soviet space (and this after a many-year ban on her books) and abroad. To this day, she remains one of the most translated Russian writers.

Isabel Allende

The most famous Spanish-language writer of the 20th century is Chilean by nationality, born in Lima, and lives in the USA, so she may well be considered Pan-American. In addition to the classics “The House of the Spirits” and the adventures of Eva Luna, the writer has, for example, an amazing autobiographical book “Paula”, dedicated to her deceased daughter and telling about the coup in Chile, the personal life and vocation of Allende herself and motherhood.

Allende proved that a Latina could become an internationally popular writer, and she herself began to set the rules for the relationship between magical realism, eroticism and historical storytelling. Her wonderful book “Aphrodite,” dedicated to aphrodisiacs, deserves special attention.

Ursula Le Guin

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, David Mitchell and Salman Rushdie, J. R. R. Martin and other greats of the literary world openly acknowledge the undeniable influence of Ursula Le Guin's work on their prose. One of the main authors of science fiction and fantasy of the 20th century, she has an imagination capable of inhabiting distant planets and thinking through in detail the features of forms of culture alternative to human ones. But not only.

In her texts, she accurately and deeply, with the wise detachment of an anthropologist, analyzes the nature of gender, sexual and social inequality, reflects on otherness in all its manifestations, on the ecology and politics of the colonialists - and the author of “The Left Hand of Darkness” and Tales of Earthsea began to ask these questions long before it became mainstream.

Olga Sedakova

Olga Sedakova was entrusted with “Moscow - Petushki” by Venedikt Erofeev, John Paul II corresponded with her, Sergei Averintsev taught her and studied with her. She translated Thomas Aquinas, Emily Dickinson, Paul Claudel and others, but most importantly, she wrote and writes poetry that in the 20th and 21st centuries does not speak funny or falsely about faith.

Sedakova began working when any creativity related to religion was banned in the USSR, and now, finding herself in completely different conditions and facing other difficulties, she continues to prove that spiritual heights and true art can still be combined and bring light, not destruction. The poetess is published in Russia and abroad, and her philosophical and philological works are no less interesting than her poems. The amazing purity and greatness of the Russian language, which the author speaks at a level unattainable for most modern writers, is visible in any of her texts, including the latest collection of poems from different years, “The Garden of the Universe.”

Svetlana Alexievich

Controversies are constantly burning around the figure of Svetlana Alexievich, and even more so after she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature: after all, she does not write fiction. Indeed, Alexievich is the first non-fiction author in the history of the award. If the writer’s political statements raise questions, then her works speak for themselves.

Alexievich's texts give ordinary people the opportunity to write history, whether we are talking about women and children in World War II or those who served in Afghanistan. Both in the program book “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face” and in the new work about the 90s “Second-Hand Time” it is difficult to separate fiction and non-fiction. The emotional effect of the great Belarusian’s prose is no less than that of novels, and what she tells is both a document of the era and a universal monument to human suffering.

The stories are written in such a way that you want to re-read them, and each time in a small text she manages to fit a surprisingly rich narrative, creating a world that significantly exceeds the volume of the work. In the collections “Too Much Happiness” and “Runaway” published in Russian, one can feel all the characteristic features of Munro’s prose. There is more ambiguity than clarity, time jumps back and forth, and the story can end in mid-sentence. Despite the sometimes wildly twisted plots and characters unexpectedly changing in the eyes of the reader, you believe every word of the author, as if you were personally observing what was happening.

Joan Didion

One of the most influential nonfiction writers to emerge from the school of New Journalism, Joan Didion is an example of a writer who creates literature from life. Since the 1960s, Didion has written prose and journalism, exploring a wide variety of social phenomena and problems. One of Didion’s most highly regarded works, the autobiographical book “The Year of Magical Thinking,” was written as a kind of therapy: the author describes the death of her husband, her daughter’s illness, and grief as a social phenomenon and as a personal experience.

Both the literary and journalistic texts of the writer are thought out to the smallest detail: a student of Hemingway, Henry James and George Eliot preaches the value of the correct construction of each sentence, because syntax, like a camera in a movie, snatches from reality exactly what the author wants to show the reader.

» Jonathan Franzen, author of "Corrections" and "Freedom" - family sagas that became events in world literature. On this occasion, book critic Lisa Birger compiled a short educational program on the main prose writers of recent years - from Tartt and Franzen to Houellebecq and Eggers - who wrote the most important books of the 21st century and deserve the right to be called new classics.

Lisa Birger

Donna Tartt

One novel every ten years - such is the productivity of the American novelist Donna Tartt. So her three novels - “The Secret History” in 1992, “Little Friend” in 2002 and “The Goldfinch” in 2013 - are a whole bibliography, and at most a dozen articles in newspapers and magazines will be added to it. And this is important: Tartt is not just one of the leading authors since The Goldfinch won the Pulitzer Prize and blew off the top of the world's best-seller lists. She is also a novelist with exceptional fidelity to the classical form.

Beginning with his first novel, The Secret History, about a group of classical studies students overindulged in literary games, Tartt drags the unwieldy genre of the long novel into the modern light. But the present here is reflected not in details, but in ideas - for us, today's people, it is no longer so important to know the name of the killer or even to reward the innocent and punish the guilty. We just want to open our mouths and watch the gears turn in amazement.

What to read first

After the success of The Goldfinch, its heroic translator Anastasia Zavozova re-translated Donna Tartt’s second novel, Little Friend, into Russian. The new translation, freed from the mistakes of the past, finally does justice to this mesmerizing novel, whose protagonist goes too far while investigating the murder of her little brother - it is both a terrible tale of Southern secrets and a harbinger of the future boom of the young adult genre.

Donna Tart"Little friend",
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Who is close in spirit

Donna Tartt is often lumped in with that other savior of the great American novel, Jonathan Franzen. For all their obvious differences, Franzen turns his texts into a persistent commentary on the state of modern society, and Tartt is completely indifferent to modernity - both of them feel like continuators of the classic great novel, feel the connection of centuries and build it for the reader.

Zadie Smith

An English novelist about whom there is much more buzz in the English-speaking world than in the Russian-speaking world. At the beginning of the new millennium, it was she who was considered the main hope of English literature. Like so many contemporary British writers, Smith is bicultural: her mother is Jamaican, her father is English, and the search for identity is the central theme of her first novel, White Teeth, about three generations of three British mixed families. “White Teeth” is remarkable primarily for Smith’s ability to refuse judgment, not to see tragedy in the inevitable clash of irreconcilable cultures, and at the same time her ability to sympathize with this other culture, not to despise it - although this confrontation itself becomes an inexhaustible source of her caustic wit.

In the same way, the clash between two professors in her second novel “On Beauty” turned out to be irreconcilable: one liberal, the other conservative, and both studying Rembrandt. Perhaps it is the conviction that there is something that unites us all, despite our differences, be it the paintings we love or the ground we walk on, that distinguishes Zadie Smith's novels from hundreds of similar identity seekers.

What to read first

Unfortunately, Smith’s last novel, “Northwest” (“NW”), was never translated into Russian, and it is unknown what will happen to the new book, “Swing Time,” which will be published in English in November. Meanwhile, “North-West” is perhaps the most successful and, perhaps, even the most understandable book about clashes and differences for us. At the center is the story of four friends who grew up together in the same area. But some managed to achieve money and success, while others did not. And the further they go, the greater the obstacle to their friendship that sociocultural differences become.

Zadie Smith"NW"

Who is close in spirit

Who is close in spirit

Next to Stoppard one is tempted to put some great figure of the last century like Thomas Bernhard. After all, his dramaturgy is, of course, very much connected with the twentieth century and the search for answers to the difficult questions posed by its dramatic history. In fact, Stoppard's closest relative in literature - and no less dear to us - is Julian Barnes, for whom the life of a timeless spirit is built in the same way through the connections of times. Nevertheless, the confused patter of Stoppard's characters, his love for absurdism and attention to the events and heroes of the past are reflected in modern drama, which should be sought in the plays of Maxim Kurochkin, Mikhail Ugarov, Pavel Pryazhko.

Tom Wolf

A legend of American journalism, his “Candy-colored Orange Petal Streamlined Baby,” published in 1965, is considered the beginning of the “new journalism” genre. In his first articles, Wolfe solemnly proclaimed that the right to observe and diagnose society henceforth belonged to journalists, not novelists. 20 years later, he himself wrote his first novel, “The Bonfire of Ambition,” and today 85-year-old Wolfe is still vigorous and with the same fury rushes at American society to tear it to shreds. However, in the 60s he didn’t do this, back then he was still fascinated by eccentrics going against the system - from Ken Kesey with his drug experiments to the guy who invented a giant lizard costume for himself and his motorcycle. Now Wolfe himself has turned into this anti-system hero: a Southern gentleman in a white suit and with a cane, despising everyone and everything, deliberately ignoring the Internet and voting for Bush. His main idea - everything around is so crazy and crooked that it is impossible to choose a side and take this crookedness seriously - should be close to many.

It's hard to miss "Bonfires of Ambition" - a great novel about New York in the 80s and the collision of black and white worlds, Wolfe's most decent translation into Russian (the work of Inna Bershtein and Vladimir Boshnyak). But you can’t call it simple reading. A reader completely new to Tom Wolfe should read “Battle for Space,” a story about the Soviet-American space race with its drama and human casualties, and his latest novel, “Voice of Blood” (2012), about life in modern Miami. Wolfe's books once sold millions of copies, but his latest novels were not as successful. And yet, for a reader unburdened by memories of Wolfe in better times, this critique of everything must make a stunning impression.

Who is close in spirit

The “New Journalism”, unfortunately, gave birth to a mouse - in the field where Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer and many others once raged, only Joan Didion and the New Yorker magazine remained, which still prefers emotional stories in present tense in the first person. But the real successors of the genre were comics artists. Joe Sacco and his graphic reports (only “Palestine” has been translated into Russian so far) are the best of what literature has managed to replace free journalistic chatter.

Leonid Yuzefovich

In the minds of the mass reader, Leonid Yuzefovich remains the man who invented the genre of historical detective stories, which so consoled us in recent decades - his books about the detective Putilin came out even before Akunin’s stories about Fandorin. It is noteworthy, however, not that Yuzefovich was the first, but that, as in his other novels, the hero of the detective stories is a real person, the first head of the detective police of St. Petersburg, detective Ivan Putilin, whose stories about his famous cases (perhaps he himself written) were published at the beginning of the 20th century. Such accuracy and attentiveness to real characters is a distinctive feature of Yuzefovich's books. His historical fantasies do not tolerate lies, and they do not appreciate invention. Here, starting with Yuzefovich’s first success, the novel “The Autocrat of the Desert” about Baron Ungern, published in 1993, there will always be a real hero in real circumstances, conjectured only where there are blind spots in the documents.

However, what is important for us about Leonid Yuzefovich is not so much his loyalty to history, but the idea of ​​how this history grinds absolutely all of us: whites, reds, yesterday and the day before yesterday, kings and impostors, everyone. The further into our time, the more clearly the historical course of Russia is felt as inevitable and the more popular and significant the figure of Yuzefovich, who has been talking about this for 30 years now.

What to read first

First of all, the latest novel “Winter Road” about the confrontation in Yakutia in the early 20s between the white general Anatoly Pepelyaev and the red anarchist Ivan Strode. The clash of armies does not mean a clash of characters: they are united by common courage, heroism, even humanism, and ultimately, a common destiny. And so Yuzefovich turned out to be the first who was able to write the history of the Civil War without taking sides.

Leonid Yuzefovich"Winter road"

Who is close in spirit

The historical novel has found fertile soil in Russia today, and a lot of good things have grown on it over the past ten years - from Alexei Ivanov to Yevgeny Chizhov. And even though Yuzefovich turned out to be a peak that cannot be taken, he has wonderful followers: for example, Sukhbat Aflatuni(the writer Evgeniy Abdullaev is hiding under this pseudonym). His novel “The Adoration of the Magi” about several generations of the Triyarsky family is both about the complex connections between eras of Russian history and about the strange mysticism that unites all these eras.

Michael Chabon

An American writer whose name we will never learn to pronounce correctly (Shibon? Chabon?), so we will stick to the errors of the first translation. Growing up in a Jewish family, Chabon heard Yiddish from childhood and, along with what normal boys are usually fed with (comics, superheroes, adventures, if necessary), he was imbued with the sadness and doom of Jewish culture. As a result, his novels are an explosive mixture of everything we love. There is the charm of Yiddish and the historical weight of Jewish culture, but all this is combined with entertainment of the truest kind: from detective noir to escapist comics. This combination turned out to be quite revolutionary for American culture, which clearly differentiates the audience between smart people and fools. In 2001, the author received the Pulitzer Prize for his most famous novel, “The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,” and in 2008, the Hugo Award for “The Union of Jewish Policemen,” and since then he has somehow died down, which is a shame: it seems that Chabon’s main word in I haven’t said anything about literature yet. His next book, Moonlight, will be published in English in November, but it is less a novel than an attempt to document the biography of an entire century through the story of the writer's grandfather, told to his grandson on his deathbed.

Chabon's most deservedly famous text is “The Adventures of Cavalier and Clay,” about two Jewish cousins ​​who invented the superhero Escapist in the 1940s. An escapist is a reverse Houdini, saving not himself, but others. But miraculous salvation can only exist on paper.

Another famous text by Chabon, “The Union of Jewish Policemen,” goes even further into the genre of alternative history - here Jews speak Yiddish, live in Alaska and dream of returning to the Promised Land, which never became the state of Israel. Once upon a time, the Coens dreamed of making a film based on this novel, but for them there was probably too little irony in it - but just right for us.

Michael Chabon"The Adventures of Cavalier and Clay"

Who is close in spirit

Perhaps it is Chabon and his complex search for the right intonation to talk about escapism, roots and personal identity that we should thank for the emergence of two brilliant American novelists. This Jonathan Safran Foer with his novels “Full Illumination” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” - about a journey to Russia in the footsteps of a Jewish grandfather and about a nine-year-old boy who is looking for his father who died on September 11. AND Junot Diaz with the delightful text “The Brief Fantastic Life of Oscar Wao” about a gentle fat man who dreams of becoming a new superhero or at least a Dominican Tolkien. He will not be able to do this because of the family curse, the dictator Trujillo and the bloody history of the Dominican Republic. Both Foer and Diaz, by the way, unlike poor Chabon, are perfectly translated into Russian - but, like him, they explore the dreams of escapism and the search for identity of not the second, but, say, the third generation of emigrants.

Michel Houellebecq

If not the main one (the French would argue), then the most famous French writer. We seem to know everything about him: he hates Islam, is not afraid of sex scenes and constantly claims the end of Europe. In fact, Houellebecq's ability to construct dystopias improves from novel to novel. It would be unfair to the author to see in his books only momentary criticism of Islam or politics or even Europe - society, according to Houellebecq, has been doomed for a long time, and the causes of the crisis are much worse than any external threat: this is the loss of personality and the transformation of a person from a thinking reed into a set of desires and functions.

What to read first

If we assume that the person reading these lines has never discovered Houellebecq, then it’s worth starting not even with famous dystopias like “The Platform” or “Submission,” but with the novel “The Map and the Territory,” which received the Goncourt Prize in 2010, an ideal commentary on modern life, from its consumerism to its art.

Michel Houellebecq"Map and Territory"

Who is close in spirit

In the genre of dystopia, Houellebecq has wonderful comrades among, as they say, living classics - the Englishman Martin Amis(who also repeatedly spoke out against Islam, which requires a person to completely lose his personality) and Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, mixing genres to make her dystopias convincing.

A wonderful rhyme to Houellebecq can be found in the novels Dave Eggers, who led the new wave of American prose. Eggers began with enormous size and ambition with a coming-of-age novel and a manifesto for new prose, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” founded several literary schools and magazines, and has recently delighted readers with scathing dystopias such as “Sphere,” a novel about an Internet corporation that has taken over peace to such an extent that its employees themselves were horrified by what they had done.

Jonathan Coe

A British writer who brilliantly continues the traditions of English satire, no one knows better than him how to tear modernity to pieces with targeted attacks. His first big success was the novel What a Scam (1994), about the dirty secrets of an English family during the time of Margaret Thatcher. With an even greater sense of painful recognition, we read the duology “The Crayfish Club” and “The Circle is Closed” about three decades of British history, from the 70s to the 90s, and how modern society became what it has become.

The Russian translation of the novel “Number 11,” a sequel to the novel “What a Scam,” which takes place in our time, will be released early next year, but for now we have something to read: Coe has a lot of novels, almost all of them have been translated into Russian. They are united by a strong plot, impeccable style and everything that is commonly called writing skill, which in the reader's language means: you grab the first page and don’t let go until the last.

What to read first

Antonia Byatt

A philological grande dame who received the Order of the British Empire for her novels, Antonia Byatt seemed to have always existed. In fact, the novel Possess was published only in 1990, and today it is studied in universities. Byatt's main skill is the ability to talk to everyone about everything. All plots, all themes, all eras are connected, a novel can be simultaneously romantic, love, detective, chivalric and philological, and according to Byatt, one can really study the state of minds in general - her novels in one way or another reflected every topic that has interested humanity in the last couple of hundred centuries.

In 2009, Antonia Byatt's Children's Book lost the Booker Prize to Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, but this is a case where history will not remember the winners. In some ways, The Children's Book is a response to the boom in children's literature in the 19th and 20th centuries. Byatt noticed that all the children for whom these books were written either ended badly or lived unhappy lives, like Christopher Milne, who could not hear about Winnie the Pooh until the end of his days. She came up with a story about children living on a Victorian estate and surrounded by fairy tales that their writer mother invents for them, and then bam - and the First World War comes. But if her books were described so simply, then Byatt would not be herself - there are a thousand characters, a hundred microplots, and fairy-tale motifs are intertwined with the main ideas of the century.

Cover: Beowulf Sheehan/Roulette

It was really difficult to write material dedicated to modern Russian writers. I thought for a long time how to determine whether an author is the best or not and what determines a writer as the best? In the end, I realized that this is not the number of awards or the frequency of mentions on the Internet, but the opinion of readers. And the only way to get a truly up-to-date list is to ask people.

That's exactly what I did. Based on the survey results, I compiled this list. Of course, I could not collect all the authors here, but highlighted only the 5 most frequently mentioned. Anything to add? Feel free to write in the comments!

Tatiana Tolstaya

It would take a very long time to list the types of activities and credentials of Tatyana Nikitichna Tolstoy. What is definitely worth knowing is that you and I were lucky to become contemporaries of a person who was included in the rating of “The 100 Most Influential Women of Russia.”

Biography:

According to Tatyana Tolstoy herself, she began writing after undergoing eye surgery. Then she had to lie blindfolded for a whole month, and this was the starting point, because it was impossible to read. Then Tatyana began to come up with plots for her first stories.

The very first story “They sat on the golden porch...”, published in the magazine, brought fame to the writer and was recognized as one of the best literary debuts of the 1980s. Subsequently, she wrote about 20 more stories and became a member of the USSR Writers' Union.

Today Tatyana Tolstaya is a laureate of prestigious awards in the field of culture, her bibliography includes more than 20 novels and collections of stories and, it seems to me, she will not stop there.

Where to start:

It is better to get acquainted with the work of Tatyana Tolstoy in order, then you will be able to trace the entire path of development of the wonderful author. When you pick up the collection of stories “They Sat on the Golden Porch...” you will immediately understand whether this is “your” author. If you want to immediately immerse yourself in the wonderful world of her novels, read “Kys”.

Zakhar Prilepin

This author can safely be called a phenomenon of modern Russian literature. Starting with stories about the Chechen War, in which he himself participated, Prilepin became a master of the realistic novel, laying the foundation for modern Russian military prose.

Biography:

Even before the institute, Zakhar Prilepin was taken into the army, after which he studied at a police school and served in the riot police. At the same time, the future writer studied at the Faculty of Philology of NSU. Lobachevsky, but even before graduating from the institute he was sent to Chechnya. Upon his return, Prilepin completed his studies and left the service, getting a job as a journalist.

The author's first works were published in newspapers and magazines and quickly became popular. In 2014 he was included in the list of one hundred people of the year according to the Russian Reporter magazine. Today Zakhar Prilepin is one of the most discussed and controversial writers and public figures. His participation in the conflict in Ukraine and support for the Crimean events caused a sharp reaction in society. Awarded “For demonstrated courage” with the Cross of Donbass Volunteers.

Where to start:

If you want to smoothly get acquainted not only with Prilepin the author, but also with Prilepin the person, it is better to start with the novel about Chechnya “Pathologies” and the collection of short stories “Boots Full of Hot Vodka”. If you want to immediately understand the full power of Prilepin’s style and get acquainted with the strongest prose of his bibliography to date, start with the full-length novel “The Abode”.

Victor Pelevin

An author who does not tolerate half measures - either you love him or you don’t. Pelevin’s work cannot be perceived selectively, singling out favorite and least favorite books. But no one can deny the influence of Pelevin’s work on modern Russian literature.

Biography:

The main motives of Pelevin's creativity can be traced already in his first steps in literature. While studying at the institute, he, together with his institute friend Victor Kulle, founded a publishing house, the first work of which was 3 volumes of the mystic Castaneda. Subsequently, Pelevin began working as a journalist and prepared publications on Eastern mysticism. At the same time, the first story “The Sorcerer Ignat and the People” was published.

Fame came to Victor two years after the release of the collection “Blue Lantern”, which was awarded a number of literary awards.

Where to start:

There is an opinion that one should gradually dive into Pelevin’s work, starting with his early novels and short stories, for example, “Yellow Arrow” and “The Recluse and the Six-Fingered.” If you start reading some of the major novels, you risk forever joining the side of those who do not consider Pelevin a good author.

Dina Rubina

Another female author who writes far from women’s literature. However, her prose is strikingly different from other authors on this list. In the case of Dina Rubina, we are dealing with deeply philosophical and measured prose about people, life and love.

Biography:

Dina Rubina began writing stories as a child. The story “Restless Nature” was published in the magazine “Youth” in 1971, when the writer was only 17 years old. Fame came to her in 1977, after the publication of the story “When Will It Snow?..”. Since then, Rubina’s works have received 8 film adaptations, her books are translated into different languages ​​of the world, and the writer herself has been awarded several prestigious literary awards.

Where to start:

Dina Rubina does not change her style over time, so you can start getting acquainted with her work from any book. It doesn’t matter whether it’s one of the best stories – “The Camera Rolls In!..” or the first novel “Here Comes the Messiah!”, in any case you will enjoy reading it.

Lyudmila Ulitskaya

Our list is completed by another woman who has been awarded 16 literary prizes around the world, including the Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the Russian Booker. By the way, Ulitskaya became the first female laureate of this prize.

Biography:

Lyudmila Ulitskaya became famous thanks to two films based on her scripts - “Liberty Sisters” and “A Woman for All”. After this, the story “Sonechka” was recognized as the best translated book of the year in France and received the prestigious Medici Prize.

Lyudmila's bibliography includes more than 20 publications, and 9 films have been made based on her scripts. Today Ulitskaya takes an active civic position. She established a fund to support humanitarian initiatives and is a member of the board of trustees of the hospice fund.

Where to start:

The easiest way to understand and feel the prose of Lyudmila Ulitskaya is after reading the novel “The Kukotsky Case.” It was he who was awarded the Russian Booker Prize in 2001, as well as the Italian Penne Prize in 2006.

Modern Russian literature is books from the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. The culture and art of our day is usually called the postmodern era. The number of Russian postmodernist authors included many talented writers. We have prepared a selection of eight significant names of modern Russian and, in many ways, world literature.

1. Victor Pelevin – This is an author mysterious to the media and the public, who wrote the cult novels “Generation P”, “Chapaev and Emptiness”, “Omon Ra” and others. He has been awarded many literary awards, including Big Book, National Bestseller and Little Booker. The pen of the classic of modern prose paints surreal pictures of the artistic world, where post-perestroika space is combined with mythological space, forming a new chaotic super-reality.
2. Zakhar Prilepin - author of modern military prose and representative of neorealism, contributing to the establishment of a new type of hero in Russian literature. Prilepin's character comes from the writer's autobiography. He is a brutal boy, an outcast with many contradictions, one of which is most often the search for God. The author is a laureate of such literary awards as the Russian Government Prize in the field of culture, “Big Book”, “Super-Natsbest”, as well as a member of the Public Council under the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.
3. Lyudmila Ulitskaya - representative of women's modern Russian prose. The first woman whose novel was nominated for the Russian Booker Award. Ulitskaya’s books, which focus on family, children’s and Christian issues, have been translated into many languages ​​of the world.
4. Tatiana Tolstaya - the writer, whose name was included in the list of “100 most influential women in Russia,” won the hearts of readers with a special narrative style, replete with the author’s comparisons and metaphors. Tolstaya actively uses the mythical and poetic tradition. The main character of her works - a “little man”, a sick person, a fool - always faces harsh reality and reveals his own “I”, exposing the existing contradictions in himself and in the world. Tolstoy’s calling card is the novel “Kys,” written in the original dystopian genre of our generation.
5. Aleksey Ivanov - author of a number of books about the Ural land, such as “The Heart of Parma”, “Cherdyn-Princess of the Mountains”, “The Geographer Drank the Globe Away”, who turned his work into a socio-cultural phenomenon. The promotion of Ivanov’s works influenced the formation of a unique brand of the Perm region and the development of tourism in it: the ethno-cultural festival “Heart of Parma” appeared, the documentary film “The Ridge of Russia” was shot with Leonid Parfenov, as well as the familiar feature film based on Ivanov’s book “ The geographer drank away his globe.”
6. Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. The work of this writer is considered as a complex phenomenon in Russian literature. As a continuer of the traditions of A.P. Chekhov, Petrushevskaya writes in the genre of a short story, accessible to every reader. However, her author's style is characterized by the fusion of many genre and thematic components, which is also characteristic of writers of the postmodern era.
7. Vladimir Sorokin - one of the brightest representatives of the Sots Art movement in Russian literature. Sorokin’s works are scandalously naturalistic, physiological, ridiculing and parodying the Soviet and post-Soviet system and its leaders. The language of Sorokin’s text arouses interest among both researchers and readers. Incredibly complex structures, filled with references, allusions, metaphors, combined with naturalism, require reader effort in order to get through the externally ugly and disgusting narrative to the meaning intended by the author.
8. Mikhail Shishkin. Characteristic features of Shishkin’s work are fragmentation and polyphony of the chronotope. His works are built on the principle of a patchwork quilt, where all parts are sewn with a single thread. The author makes the interaction of his characters possible, despite temporal and spatial boundaries. The specificity of the writer’s prose is attractive because he himself never manages to indicate the place of action, because “it happens always and everywhere.”

Do you think your favorite author should be on this list? Suggest your options in the comments!

Women excel in many fields, and writing is no exception. There are a great many women writers who have written outstanding books that can change lives. It is quite difficult to choose the best of them, but still below you will find our list of the 10 best and most popular modern female writers in the world.

— 10 —

Joan Kathleen Rowling

The creator of children's books that explore the fascinating and magical world of Harry Potter is considered one of the most influential women in Britain. More than 450 million copies of her bestselling series have been sold worldwide.

She says the idea for the story came to her on a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990. Her books reflect how Joan's imagination goes far beyond everyday reality.

Thanks to the Harry Potter series of books, in five years she changed her status from an unemployed woman living on welfare to a billionaire.

— 09 —

With 800 million books sold, Steele is currently the best-selling writer alive and the fourth best-selling author ever published. All of her novels became bestsellers. Their plot, as a rule, is about how rich families experience crises and complex love stories. Steele has also tried writing children's fiction and poetry.

She also raises funds for the treatment of psychiatric diseases. Her books have been translated into 28 languages, and films have been made based on 22 of her works.

— 08 —

Her novels are distinguished by interesting and carefully written characters and vivid dialogues. Her best novels are The Bluest Eyes (1970), Sula (1973), Song of Songs (1977) and Beloved (1987).

She is the proud owner of the Pulitzer Prize, the US National Book Award and the Nobel Prize in Literature, and on May 12, 2012, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

— 07 —

Stephenie Meyer is famous for her vampire saga "Twilight", which has sold more than 100 million copies worldwide. Her books have been translated into 37 languages ​​and have become a global phenomenon.

Her annual income exceeded $50 million, and in 2010 she was ranked 59th on Forbes magazine's list of the most powerful celebrities.