This book examines communist and post-communist literary and visual narratives, including the writings of prominent anti-communist dissidents and exiles such as Vladimir Nabokov, Czeslaw Milosz and Milan Kundera, exploring important themes including...
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This book examines communist and post-communist literary and visual narratives, including the writings of prominent anti-communist dissidents and exiles such as Vladimir Nabokov, Czeslaw Milosz and Milan Kundera, exploring important themes including how Eastern European regimes and cultures have been portrayed as totalitarian, barbarian and "Orientalist" - in contrast to the civilized "West" - disappointment in the changes brought on by post-communist transition, and nostalgia for communism
Electronic reproduction; Available via World Wide Web
Book Cover; Title; Copyright; Contents; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction; 2 ''Doubly obscure'' dissident narrative: Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire; 3 Shifting topographies of Eastern/Central/Europe in Joseph Brodsky's and Czeslaw Milosz's prose writing; 4 Deviant stepchild of European history: Communist Eastern Europe in Milan Kundera and Gunter Grass; 5 Primitive accumulation and Neanderthal liberalism: Victor Pelevin, Gary Shteyngart, and criminal Eastern Europe; 6 Ethnicizing guilt: Humanitarian imperialism and the case of (for) Yugoslavia; 7 Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index
