Pushkin Hills

by Sergei Dovlatov

Overview

An unsuccessful writer and an inveterate alcoholic, Boris Alikhanov has recently divorced his wife Tatyana, and he is running out of money. The prospect of a summer job as a tour guide at the Pushkin Hills Preserve offers him hope of regaining some balance in life as his wife makes plans to emigrate to the West with their daughter Masha, but during Alikhanov's stay in the rural estate of Mikhaylovskoye, his life continues to unravel.

Populated with unforgettable characters—including Alikhanov's fellow guides Mitrofanov and Pototsky, and the KGB officer Belyaev—Pushkin Hills ranks among Dovlatov's renowned works The Suitcase and The Zone as his most personal and poignant portrayal of the Russian attitude towards life and art.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619024779
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	03/17/2015
Edition description:	First Trade Paper Edition
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Sergei Dovlatov was born in Ufa, Bashkiria (U.S.S.R.), in 1941. He dropped out of the University of Leningrad after two years and was drafted into the army, serving as a guard in high–security prison camps. In 1965 he began to work as a journalist, first in Leningrad and then in Tallinn, Estonia. After a period of intense harassment by the authorities, he emigrated to the United States in 1978. He lived in New York until his death in 1990.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Pushkin Hills

"Broke and divorced, Boris has taken a job as a tour–guide at the Pushkin Hills Preserve, where he immediately goes about hilariously ridiculing the visitors and staff who so revere Pushkin. Dovlatov's short novel begins as a comedy but, rife with pathos, progresses toward a moving final act." —Publisher's Weekly, a Best Book of 2014

"This is a most satisfying read that sustains its humor and emotional resonance." —Publisher's Weekly

"The descent of the drunkard in Pushkin Hills, from qualified hope to utter despair, is arguably one of Dovlatov's greatest contributions to Russian literature." —New York Review of Books

"The preserve in "Pushkin Hills" works as kind of a microcosm of Russian life and politics – in which one's dedication to love of country is constantly being tested. Dovlatov recognizes that this sense of surreal political paranoia does have a humorous element..." —Christian Science Monitor

"Narrated in the first person, Alikhanov's hilarious observations of the community and people around him ("He was too lazy to put on a hat. He simply laid it on top of his head"), his alcoholic misadventures, and especially his ridicule of the Pushkin Hills Preserve tourists propel this comic but trenchant story. . .A most satisfying read that sustains its humor and emotional resonance."—Publishers Weekly

"A black comedy of eyes–wide–open excess [...] and a fine rumination on being Russian, besides." —Kirkus Reviews

"This is a most satisfying read that sustains its humor and emotional resonance." —Publisher's Weekly

From the Publisher

★ 12/09/2013
In Dovlatov’s posthumously translated short novel, Boris Alikhanov, a frustrated writer, recently divorced and low on money, takes up a menial tour-guide position at the Pushkin Hills Preserve. Feeling he’s entitled to a better life because of his self-ascribed literary brilliance, and the nagging thought that he picked up the pen for a reason, he spends much of his time mentally lampooning the people he meets and their undying devotion to Pushkin. Narrated in the first person, Alikhanov’s hilarious observations of the community and people around him (“He was too lazy to put on a hat. He simply laid it on top of his head”), his alcoholic misadventures, and especially his ridicule of the Pushkin Hills Preserve tourists propel this comic but trenchant story. Along the way, he recounts, in his deadpan voice, numerous anecdotes, ruminates on the failings of his writer contemporaries, and falls in love. The novel, however, is not without heart, and the moving final act prevents the book from becoming one-note. A most satisfying read that sustains its humor and emotional resonance. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2014-02-06
Soviet émigré Dovlatov died in New York in 1990, and since then, his reputation in America, bolstered late in life by the New Yorker and by fans, including Kurt Vonnegut, has faded. With luck, that reputation will be restored and enhanced by the first English publication (with a lively, playful translation by his daughter Katherine) of this brief, fabulous, partly autobiographical 1983 novel. Hard-drinking Boris Alikhanov, unable to win publication approval from the authorities and set adrift by his ex-wife and their daughter in Leningrad, repairs to the countryside and takes a ridiculous but appealing summer gig as a literary tour guide at the Pushkin estate. There, he encounters a marvelous gallery of rogues, washouts and eccentrics like himself, exemplars of the 19th-century Russian type known as the "superfluous man"—smart, alienated, determined wastrels of their so-called potential. For a time, he seems to regain a grip on his life in this weird, intermittently hilarious rural idyll, but after his ex-wife comes to visit and asks him to sign a form permitting their daughter to emigrate with her to the West, Boris embarks on an epic bender. The portrait of Boris that emerges is of a man who seems most pitiable in that he asks no pity, offers no face-saving excuses, can't even muster the small consolation of self-delusion. He's simply stuck: "Any decisive step imposes responsibility. So let others be held responsible. Inactivity is the only moral condition." Told mainly in barbed, surprising dialogue—Dovlatov's trademark technical flourish was never to have two words in any sentence begin with the same letter, and the result here is a breezy, angular, associative style that seems almost Grace Paley–ish—this is an odd, dark, idiosyncratic little dazzler. A black comedy of eyes-wide-open excess in the vein of Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes or David Gates' Jernigan. And a fine rumination on being Russian, besides.

Kirkus Reviews