An Obsession With History: Russian Writers Confront The Past
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good to fair. Paperback. Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.
Few national literatures are as haunted by the weight of their own past as Russia's — and An Obsession with History: Russian Writers Confront the Past is the definitive study of that haunting. Andrew Baruch Wachtel charts a bold and illuminating course through centuries of Russian literary culture, arguing that the compulsion to wrestle with, rewrite, and reimagine history is not merely a recurring theme but the very engine of Russia's greatest prose and poetry. From Pushkin and Tolstoy to the turbulent voices of the Soviet era, Wachtel presents a sweeping intellectual panorama of writers who understood that to control the narrative of the past was to control the soul of a nation. Wachtel's analysis is rigorous yet compulsively readable, deploying close textual readings alongside sweeping cultural arguments to reveal how Russian writers used historical fiction and memoir not as escape but as intervention. His scholarship sits at the thrilling intersection of literary theory and cultural history, uncovering the deep structural patterns that unite writers separated by centuries and ideology. For anyone seeking to understand why Russia's literary tradition feels so urgently, almost desperately alive, this work issues a challenge that is impossible to ignore.
Author: Andrew Baruch Wachtel
Format: Paperback
Genre: Literary theory
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good to fair. Paperback. Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.
Few national literatures are as haunted by the weight of their own past as Russia's — and An Obsession with History: Russian Writers Confront the Past is the definitive study of that haunting. Andrew Baruch Wachtel charts a bold and illuminating course through centuries of Russian literary culture, arguing that the compulsion to wrestle with, rewrite, and reimagine history is not merely a recurring theme but the very engine of Russia's greatest prose and poetry. From Pushkin and Tolstoy to the turbulent voices of the Soviet era, Wachtel presents a sweeping intellectual panorama of writers who understood that to control the narrative of the past was to control the soul of a nation. Wachtel's analysis is rigorous yet compulsively readable, deploying close textual readings alongside sweeping cultural arguments to reveal how Russian writers used historical fiction and memoir not as escape but as intervention. His scholarship sits at the thrilling intersection of literary theory and cultural history, uncovering the deep structural patterns that unite writers separated by centuries and ideology. For anyone seeking to understand why Russia's literary tradition feels so urgently, almost desperately alive, this work issues a challenge that is impossible to ignore.