Sleepwalker in a Fog: Stories

By Tatyana Tolstaya

Book Overview

By the most original, tactile, luminous voice in Russian prose today (Joseph Brodsky), Sleepwalker in a Fog is a collection of seven stories and a novella set in contemporary Russia. Here is Denisov, who fears his greatest accomplishment in life will be the treatise he wrote and tore up. He is betrothed to Lora, an incessant talker who dreams of having a fluffy tail. We also read of Natasha, who searches Leningrad and her memory for her lost love; of Dmitry Ilich's elaborate seduction of Olga Mikhailovna; and more. In the tradition of such writers as Gogol and Chekhov, Tatyana Tolstaya transforms ordinary lives into something magical and strange. Translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell From the Trade Paperback edition.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394587316
• ISBN13: 9780394587318
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

a few true gems in this collection

I first came across one of Tolstaya's stories in the New Yorker, and was amazed by her style. There is no western writer I know of who writes in such fluid, fantastic and yet earthy prose. The closest I could come is Bohumil Hrabal, but that is only a very distant resemblance. While the writig is breathtaking, I found the longer stories in the book somewhat difficult to get through - they are composed of a series of tightly knit anecdotes and tales which flow from one into another. I believe that Russian literature is notoriously difficult to translate, and that may have something to do with it. Nevertheless, stories like "Serafim" and "Most Beloved" are fantastic. I am looking forward to her new book, "The Slynx".

An Inbreathing Book

Russian literature has always been about ethics. I really can't find any other universal feature that makes Russian prose, both classical and modern, so singular a phenomenon. Command of language? Incredible as it is in the works of Russian classics, it's not unique among the world literatures, and anyway is mostly lost in translations. Universal comprehensibility? Not at all; unlike Shakespearean plays that are set in some vague pan-European context, Russian novels are always tightly bound to Russia's very own religion, mentality, and history that are scarcely known in the West. What remains, and what really sets Russian literature apart, is its moral imperative---the impossibility for a Russian writer to show any disdain or ridicule towards those dispossessed, fragile, or helpless. Deep thrilling compassion and frantic pursuit of justice are characteristic of both the Russian classic novels of XIX century and the modern short stories by Tatyana Tolstaya. "Breathing" is perhaps the best one-word description of Tolstaya's prose. It's not the suffocated gasping of Dostoyevsky, not the gentle crystalline air of Chekhov, not even the powerful storm of consciousness of Leo Tolstoy (whose great-grandniece is Tolstaya). Winds, airs, puffs are transfusing the fabric of these delicate pieces of prose; words and images are streaming, curling, twisting in long yet weightless sentences. Tolstaya's winds smell like sea, like childhood, like love; she makes us remember that the word "spirit" is derived from the Latin stem meaning "air." Reading this book is like breathing freely outdoors after endless hours in a stuffy room...