New Releases by Elena Gorokhova

In post-World War II Russia, a girl must reconcile a tragic past with her hope for the future in this powerful and poignant novel about family secrets, passion and loss, perseverance and ambition. In a small, provincial town behind the Iron Curtain, Sasha lives in a house full of secrets, one of which is her own dream of becoming an actress. When she leaves for Moscow to audition for drama school, she defies her mother and grandparents and abandons her first love, Andrei. Before she leaves, Sasha discovers the hidden war journal of her uncle Kolya, an artist still missing in action years after the war has ended. His pages expose the official lies and the forbidden truth of Stalin''s brutality. Kolya''s revelations and his tragic love story guide Sasha through drama school and cement her determination to live a thousand lives onstage. After graduation, she begins acting in Leningrad, where Andrei, now a Communist Party apparatchik, becomes a censor of her work. As a past secret comes to light, Sasha''s ambitions converge with Andrei''s duties, and Sasha must decide if her dreams are truly worth the necessary sacrifice and if, as her grandmother likes to say, all will indeed be well.

Un montón de migajas son las memorias de juventud de una chica curiosa e inteligente que lucha por sobrevivir en la represora Unión Soviética de los años sesenta, sin renunciar a sus anhelos de libertad. Elena Gorokhova es una joven rusa que descubre las verdades que los adultos le ocultan y las mentiras que subyacen al triunfalismo oficial de su patria: su país ya no es la Rusia majestuosa de las novelas decimonónicas o de los zares, sino un Estado totalitario y desesperado por preservar a toda costa su poder y su orgullo. Elena se apasiona por el estudio de la lengua inglesa y desea explorar el mundo más allá del telón de acero, pero en la Unión Soviética de 1960 algo tan inocente puede resultar subversivo: el Estado la controla del mismo modo que la controla su madre, convertida en un espejo de la madre patria: autoritaria y sobreprotectora, es difícil zafarse de ella. A los veinticuatro años, tras varios desengaños, Elena asumirá las consecuencias de su inconformismo y se propondrá emigrar al extranjero para liberarse del doble yugo nacional y materno. La crítica ha dicho «Gorokhova plasma la fealdad y las humillaciones de la vida cotidiana en la Unión Soviética, pero también es sensible a la poesía que late, asfixiada, bajo su superficie. Un libro fascinante.» J. M. Coetzee «El equivalente ruso de Las cenizas de Ángela.» Billy Collins, Poeta Emérito de los EE. UU. «Por suerte, para entender el horror inoculado por una ideología aniquiladora del ser humano, se han traducido últimamente al español libros que dejan constancia del terror imperante durante el período estalinista, pero pocos, que yo sepa, de la época posterior de asentamiento y esclerotización del comunismo. De ahí el valor e importancia de Un montón de migajas de Elena Gorokhova (...).» Fermín Herrero, Revista Epicuro

"In A Mountain of Crumbs, Elena Gorokhova describes coming of age behind the Iron Curtain and leaving her mother and her motherland for a new life in the United States. Now, in Russian Tattoo, Elena learns that the journey of an immigrant is filled with everyday mistakes, small humiliations, and a loss of dignity. Cultural disorientation comes in the form of not knowing how to eat a hamburger, buy a pair of shoes, or catch a bus. But through perseverance and resilience, Elena gradually adapts to her new country"--

Der anrührende Lebensrückblick beginnt, womit äGoodbye Leningradä, die Jugenderinnerungen der Autorin (geboren 1955), endeten: mit der Ausreise in die USA. Anekdotenreich erzählt sie, wie sie lernte, Amerika zu begreifen, glücklich der Kontrolle ihrer Mutter entronnen. Doch die folgte ihr.

Elena Gorokhova grows up in 1960''s Leningrad where she discovers that beauty and passion can be found in unexpected places in Soviet Russia.

"Forse, se non avessi trascorso tutte le domeniche di primavera affondando fino alle caviglie nel fango per coltivare l''orto, non mi sarei lasciata sedurre con tanta facilità dai suoni decadenti della lingua inglese provenienti dai solchi di un disco. Mi sarei iscritta alla facoltà di Medicina, come mia madre, o di Ingegneria, come facevano tutti. E forse non sarei fuggita in America su un volo dell''Aeroflot, trascinando una valigia messa a soqquadro da un agente del KGB, valigia in cui avevo infilato venti chili di quella che era stata la mia vita."

Elena Gorokhova’s A Mountain of Crumbs is the moving story of a Soviet girl who discovers the truths adults are hiding from her and the lies her homeland lives by. Elena’s country is no longer the majestic Russia of literature or the tsars, but a nation struggling to retain its power and its pride. Born with a desire to explore the world beyond her borders, Elena finds her passion in the complexity of the English language—but in the Soviet Union of the 1960s such a passion verges on the subversive. Elena is controlled by the state the same way she is controlled by her mother, a mirror image of her motherland: overbearing, protective, difficult to leave. In the battle between a strong-willed daughter and her authoritarian mother, the daughter, in the end, must break free and leave in order to survive. Through Elena’s captivating voice, we learn not only the stories of Russian family life in the second half of the twentieth century, but also the story of one rebellious citizen whose curiosity and determination finally transport her to a new world. It is an elegy to the lost country of childhood, where those who leave can never return.