#keith gessen

[dinonfissatoaffetto]

Ci feriamo continuamente. Passiamo la vita a metterci vestiti nuovi e a coprire i veri motivi delle nostre azioni. Ci incontriamo a cuor leggero, beviamo vino rosé, e poi ci causiamo dolore a vicenda. E sì che non vorremmo mica…

Quello che vorremmo, quello che uno vorrebbe davvero, è stendere le mani – come in una danza – stendere le mani e basta, e toccare tutte le persone e dire: Mi dispiace. Ti voglio bene. Grazie per avermi scritto. Grazie per essermi venuto a trovare.

Grazie.

Ti voglio bene.

- Keith Gessen

[theblackestofsuns]

All The Sad Young Literary Men (2008)

Keith Gessen

Viking Books

[illustration-alcove]

Alessandro Gottardo’s illustrated book cover for Keith Gessen’s A Terrible Country.

[the-final-sentence]

My father and I have commenced work on our next refuge.

Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, from “The New Robinson Crusoes” in There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby, trans. Keith Gessen and Anna Summers

[warningsine]

There’s something I felt in Chernobyl, something I understood that I don’t really want to talk about. About the fact, for example, that all our humanistic ideas are relative. In an extreme situation, people don’t behave the way you read about in books. Sooner the other way around. People aren’t heroes. We’re all—peddlers of the apocalypse. Big and small.

Svetlana Aleksievich, Voices from Chernobyl, tr. by Keith Gessen

[universitybookstore]

“A cause for celebration” indeed, new from translator and and novelist Keith Gessen, an acid portrait of life in Putin’s new Russia, A Terrible Country, from Viking.

[learningrussianwithanna]

Why Did I Teach My Son to Speak Russian?

When bilingualism isn’t obviously valuable, you have to decide what you think of the language.

Saving to read later.

[the-final-sentence]

And in her dream her husband came to her and said, 'Thank you, Lida, for burying me.'

Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, from "Incident at Sokolniki" in There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby, trans. Keith Gessen and Anna Summers