GPWRR: Great Writers of the Russian Land

31 hrs. 35 min.

Miscellaneous

Language Russian

Author Igor Svinarenko

Narrator Kirill Petrov

Description

Igor Svinaryenko — a prose writer, journalist, and editor — made dinner-table conversation another of his professional pursuits. And who in Russia can you talk to from the heart and with flair? Of course, with the VPZR, “Great Writers of the Russian Land.” The abbreviation is ironic only partly; many writers take it seriously, especially if the conversation is at a banquet and the interlocutor skillfully provokes and needles—on that score, he is a master. Forty writers opened their souls to him (sometimes without holding back in their wording), and he gathered it all into a book and put it up for sale. It turned out, in places, outrageous—but always interesting.

Contents:

23 years later
VPZR
Vasily Aksyonov. An ITTeery bonfire
Boris Akunin: “Thank you, Dan Brown!”
Svetlana Alexievich: “I’ll let those speak who weren’t listened to”
Yuri Arabov: “Russian literature basically isn’t there”
Arkady Arkhanov: “Putin looked me in the eye”
Alexander Arkhangelsky: “Popularity isn’t exactly cheap”
Andrey Bitov: “The main thing is to die not in a shameful way”
Dmitry Bykov: “I’m a grafomaniac”
Aleksey Varlamov. The triumph of non-fiction
Mikhail Weller: “There are more and more idiots around”
Eduard Volodarsky: “Me and Vysotsky were planning to emigrate”
Anatoly Gladilin: “Scoundrels, welcome to Paris!”
Alexander Genis: “I see God’s reflection in a herring”
Valery Grinberg: “I like everything I write”
Yevgeny Yevtushenko. A poet in Oklahoma—more than a poet
Sergey Zhadan: “I don’t wait for a call from Poroshenko”
Alexander Ilichevsky. Return from Silicon Valley
The poet Irtenyev—also known as Pravdorub and Rabinovich
Fazil Iskander: “I think…”
Alexander Kabakov: “A writer-prophet isn’t the same as Baba Vanga”
Ivan Kononov—which “The Left Bank of the Don”
Writer Koh: “Chekhov’s glory is enough for me”
Eduard Limonov: “Black bones must come to power”
Dmitry Lipskerov: “In the Russian soul it’s dark”
Sergey Lukyanenko: “I consider myself a Russian chauvinist”
Boris Minaev: “The grafomaniac is me, and Bykov is flirting”
Andrey Orlov: “I’m a drunk, an alcoholic, a fool, and a womanizer”
Viktor Pelevin: “You just need 2,000 hieroglyphs”
Viktor Pelenyagre: “I composed the anthem of the Russian Federation”
Yuri Polyakov: “Young people drink less, write worse”
Zakhar Prilepin: “The National Bolsheviks are damned by power, by the people, and by the zone”
Alexander Prokhanov: “I’m a seasoned robber”
Valentin Rasputin — new Russian truth?
Vladimir Sorokin. Oprichnik for export
Boris Strugatsky: “I don’t consider myself a matrom”
Mikhail Tarkovsky. Life in the fresh air
Alexander Terekhov: “Jourfak—none of us came out of a шинель of Zasursky by accident”
Tatyana Tolstaya—countess, as a countess
Lyudmila Ulitskaya: “We’re back in the kitchen of the 60s”
Eduard Uspensky: “Cheburashka is a guy!”

Appendices:
Appendix 1
Petr Aven. I dreamed of becoming a writer, but…
Appendix 2 (From the archives)
Dmitry Nabokov. Little daddy’s boy
Elena Sikorskaya: “My brother Vladimir Nabokov”
Nabokov’s butterflies. “A provincial naturalist, a lost oddball in paradise”
Appendix 3
On the harm of respectable women
Savages and officers
“Idiocy of rural life” (A horror film script request)
100 years of Russian mess
Appendix 4
Nina Buis. RRussian LIterature: conversion at the course