Reasons For Living | Granta

  • Published: 15/08/2002
  • ISBN: 9781862075269
  • Granta Books
  • 208 pages

Reasons For Living

Dmitry Bakin

Translated by Andrew Bromfield

These passionate, haunting, mysterious stories made a remarkable impact when they were published in Moscow. Known only through a handful of stories published in literary journals, Dmitry Bakin suddenly found himself hailed as one of the most striking and original young writers to emerge since perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union. As if Kafka or Gabriel Garcia Marquez were writing from the heartlands – or badlands – of the Russian provinces, Bakin’s tales are gripping, elemental dramas of restlessness and anguish. Nothing is stable in Bakin’s fictional universe, least of all reality, and everyone is searching, whether for safety, certainty, freedom or revenge. Survivors, obsessives, eccentrics, mystics, they are all prepared – or condemned – to sacrifice everything if they have to. Unsettling, extraordinarily imaginative and ambitious, this collection offers compelling evidence of a unique and burgeoning literary talent.

The Author

Dmitry Bakin first came to prominence when his short stories were published in the literary journal, Ogonyok, during the 1990s and a collection of them was subsequently published by Gallimard in France after he won the anti-Booker prize for Russian Literature in 1996. He works as a driver for a telecommunications company and lives with his wife and son in Moscow.

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