Synopses & Reviews
Saint
Petersburg, 1905. Behind the gates of the Karenin Palace, Sergei, son of
Anna Karenina, meets Tolstoy in his dreams and finds reminders of his
mother everywhere: the vivid portrait that the tsar intends to acquire
and the opium-infused manuscripts Anna wrote just before her death,
which open a trapdoor to a wild feminist fairy tale.
Across the city,
Clementine, an anarchist seamstress, and Father Gapon, the charismatic
leader of the proletariat, plan protests that embroil the downstairs
members of the Karenin household in their plots and tip the country ever
closer to revolution.
Boullosa tells a polyphonic and subversive tale
of the Russian revolution through the lens of Tolstoy's most beloved
work.
Review
"[A] madcap metafictive romp....[a] tour de force account of early revolutionary
activity....Reminiscent of Bolaño, Borges, and Pynchon, but
Boullosa's utterly original voice is at its best when it's let loose." Kirkus
Review
"[P]resented in parallel with stories and characters that were not part of Tolstoy's 1878 novel, The Book of Anna
is also an imagining of the book that Anna herself was working on....a rich, unique style." Buzzfeed
Review
"Anna Karenina's
children and other fictions of Tolstoy's — who know they aren't exactly
human — intertwine with Carmen Boullosa's own fictions, who think they
are real, and also with the Russian Revolution. A delightfully original
and enjoyable book — Russian literature seen through Latin American eyes,
and made into something new." Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses
About the Author
Carmen
Boullosa — a Cullman Center, a Guggenheim, a Deutscher Akademischer
Austauschdienst, and a Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes
Fellow — was born in Mexico City in 1954. She's a poet, playwright,
essayist, novelist, and artist, and has been a professor at New York
University, Columbia University, City College — City University of New
York, Georgetown, and other institutions. She's now at Macaulay Honors
College — City University of New York. The New York Public Library
acquired her papers and artist books. More than a dozen books and over
ninety dissertations have been written about her work.
Samantha Schnee is the founding editor of
Words Without Borders, dedicated to publishing the world's best literature translated into English. Her translation of Boullosa's
Texas: The Great Theft was longlisted for the International
Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for the PEN America Translation
Prize. She won the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation for her work on
Boullosa's
El complot de los Románticos.