S Slav Sisters: The Dedalus Book of Russian Women’s Literature

This anthology illustrates the evolution of Russian women writing over the 20th century. Women produced literary texts as early as the Middle Ages, but only in the 1900s women authors finally made a notable breakthrough on the Russian literary scene. Despite a brilliant start further development of women writing in Russia was crudely interrupted by the Soviet censorship and only resumed after the downfall of the USSR. Whereas critics unanimously recognize the greatness of such literary stars as Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetayeva, opinions differ about other celebrities of the times such as Teffi and Lydia Ginzburg who reached wide readerships only in the 1990s, when most of the formerly banned books were published. During the mid-century, women were almost invisible in Russian literature, but they were still writing, including such world-famous authors as Ludmila Ulitskaya, Galina Scherbakova, and Svetlana Alexiyevich. In the later decades women were increasingly dominating publishing programmes and are represented here by Olga Slavnikova, Ludmila Ulitskaya, Irina Muravyova, and Margarita Khemlin. AUTHOR: Natasha Perova, translator, editor, publisher, literary agent. A philology graduate of Moscow University she worked in publishing houses producing Russian books in English translation. In 1991 she started the independent small press GLAS to publish and promote new Russian writing in translation. In 2015 the press had to be put on hold and Perova continued to promote contemporary Russian authors as a literary agent.