The Pushkin Club welcomes you to an evening with writer Irina Potanina, a writer from Kharkiv who has published more than 30 books across various genres. Irina will discuss her writing and its deep connection to her family history.
Irina Potanina’s first solo novel was published in Moscow by AST in 2001, and her series of retro-detective novels, set in Kharkiv in the 1930s and 1940s, holds a special place in her heart. The main character is a real person, based on Irina’s great-grandfather, the famous theatre critic and journalist Vladimir Morskoy, who was arrested in 1950 and perished in Stalin’s concentration camps.
Every literary author who includes a real person as a character in their novels embarks on a search for information. To learn about their character they have to dig through documents, newspapers, eye-witness evidence and the work of historians and ethnographers. When the Russians invaded her country, Irina fled to the United Kingdom in search of security and safety for her 6- and 17-year-old sons. However, she remains in close contact with her relatives in Kharkiv, and is constantly amazed to what extent the evidence she is unearthing during her research echoes the current situation and the events of the present day.
The Pushkin Club has held regular events devoted to Russian culture and society since its foundation in 1954.