Both before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, everyday life and the domestic sphere served as an ideological battleground, simultaneously threatening Stalinist control and challenging traditional Russian gender norms that had been shaken by the Second World War. The Prose of Life examines how six female authors employed images of daily life to depict women s experience in Russian culture from the 1960s to the present. Byt, a term connoting both the everyday and its many petty problems, is an enduring yet neglected theme in Russian literature: its very ordinariness...

Novelist Ludmila Ulitskaya is a crucial cultural figure in contemporary Russia, garnering both literary awards and best-seller status. Engaging with the past to combat the creeping authoritarianism of the Putin era, she has become the latest in a long line of Russian dissident authors championing the values of liberalism and tolerance while critiquing the state. Ludmila Ulitskaya and the Art of Tolerance is the first English-language book about this influential writer, contextualizing her in the shifting landscape of post-Soviet society and culture.
Drawing on interviews with...