Andrey Kurkov, Geografiia odinochnogo vystrela [A Bullet's Itinerary]

Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2000

Places

Russia (Publication/ performance)
Ukraine (Country of Origin; Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Geografiia odinochnogo vystrela

[

A Bullet’s Itinerary

], an 800-page long trilogy first published in 2000, took Kurkov seven years to complete. It is set in 1928-1977 in Soviet Russia, or rather in an alternative absurdist version of it, which is ruled, for a large part of the book, by Mikhail Kalinin (who changes his name to Tverin, after the city of Tver’, which is exactly the opposite of what really happened), while Stalin is not even mentioned.

A Bullet’s Itinerary

is a brave attempt to merge the saint’s life genre with the epic novel. The book consists of three parts which cannot stand on their own. Once again with Kurkov, we are dealing with several slowly evolving parallel narratives. Narrative I is about an Angel who descends from Paradise to Earth trying to find out why no…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

863 words

Citation: Rogatchevski, Andrei. "Geografiia odinochnogo vystrela". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 October 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=31910, accessed 22 November 2024.]

Andrey Kurkov, Geografiia odinochnogo vystrela [A Bullet's Itinerary]

Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Resources

Save this article

Leave Feedback