In Search of the Ultimate Man

15 hrs. 5 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Galina Shcherbakova

Narrator Elena Spirina

Description

It’s somehow taken for granted that Don Juanism is the domain of men alone. To seduce and to pursue—to cool down and to listen as inside a worm of satiety gnaws its way forward. To leave, to destroy someone else’s life, and never to take responsibility for anything—because love knows neither laws nor morality.
Don Juans of Galina Shcherbakova are women. It is they who hunt for men, go “to pasture on the meadows,” running away from the order of life that has been scheduled once and for all. Especially in Russia, especially during the early years of perestroika.
It’s they who trade apartments and turn upside down the idea of the primacy of youth in amorous matters. But what lies behind this “freedom”? Rape in adolescence, the damage of communal living with sick elderly parents who no hospital would take in, the impossibility of defeating the System that is ready to send even an disabled son to the army…
Freedom turns into revenge for an unhappy past—but the past cannot be changed. And the price of peace is only forgiveness.
Two novels are included in the new prose collection by Galina Shcherbakova: “In Search of the Ultimate Man” (previously published under the title “The Army of Lovers”) and “At the Feet of Fallen Women.”