Join us for the next Reading Group meeting, where we will discuss Living Pictures by Polina Barskova. Growing up in Leningrad, Polina Barskova saw no trace of the estimated million people who died in the city during the Nazi blockade of 1941-44. As one of Russia’s most admired and controversial contemporary writers, she has repeatedly returned to the archive of texts still being recovered from the siege, finding creative ways to commemorate these ghosts from her home city’s past.
The meeting will be facilitated by our bookshop co-curator Sasha Padziarei and engagement curator Alisa Oleva.
In our last Reading Group before Christmas, we invite you to dress up as your favourite literary character – go all out or just add a small detail.
A chorus of the voices and stories of those lost in the siege appears in Living Pictures, a breathtakingly inventive literary collage of memoir, archival material and fiction. With blazing immediacy and wit, Barskova delves into traumas historical and personal, writing of memories from a Soviet childhood, her foundational relationships and losses, and a life spent excavating vital fragments from under Leningrad’s official history. Ending with a stunning chamber drama about two real people who died while sheltering in the Hermitage Museum during the siege, this is a rich, polyphonic work of living history.
2021 saw the opening of Pushkin House’s very own physical bookshop in addition to our online store. While it is still being honed and developed, we are keen to highlight literature that inspires, encourages, moves and validates our readers. We also want to amplify the voices, writers and readers that historically didn’t get and, perhaps, still don’t get the visibility, power and appreciation they deserve. Most of all, we want to create a physical (and an online) place for connection where people can come and share their views.