The Witching Hour and Other Plays by Nina Sadur (Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History) - Hardcover

Sadur, Nina

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1618113984 ISBN 13: 9781618113986

Publisher: Academic Studies Press, 2014

Synopsis

Nina Sadur, the playwright, occupies a prominent place in the Soviet/Russian drama pantheon of the 1980s and 1990s, a group that has with few exceptions been generally ignored by the Western literary establishment. The plays included in this volume offer some of Sadur’s most influential works for the theater to the English-speaking audience for the first time. The collection will appeal to readers interested in Russian literature and culture, Russian theater, as well as women’s literature. Sadur’s plays are inspired by symbolist drama, the theater of the absurd and Russian folklore, yet are also infused with contemporary reality and populated by contemporary characters. Her work is overtly gynocentric: the fictional world construes women’s traditionally downplayed concerns as narratively and existentially central and crucial. Sadur’s drama has exerted a tremendous influence on contemporary Russian literature. Working essentially in isolation, Sadur was able to combine the early twentieth century dramatic discourse with that of the late Soviet era. Having built a bridge between the two eras, Sadur prepared the rise of the new Russian drama of the 2000s.

About this title

About the Author:

Born in Riga, Latvia, Nadya L. Peterson was educated in Moscow, Russia and received her Ph.D. in Russian literature from Indiana University. She is currently an Associate Professor of Russian at Hunter College of the City University of New York and the Head of the Russian and Slavic Studies Program at Hunter. Peterson is also on the faculty of the doctoral program in the Department of Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is a specialist on contemporary Russian prose and women’s literature. Peterson is the author of Subversive Imaginations: Fantastic Prose and the End of Soviet Literature, 1970s-1990s and of a number of articles on various aspects of Russian literature, culture and education. She is a published translator and editor, most recently of Russian Love Stories (Peter Lang, 2009).

Review:

“This new collection of four plays by Nina Sadur is a welcome addition to the fields of both Russian literature and theatre. It includes some of Sadur’s best-known works as well as some lesser-known plays. . . . [A] very successful collection . . . ” (Marc Robinson, St. Olaf College Canadian Slavonic Papers)

“Finally English-language readers can become familiar with the disquieting, mysterious, yet disturbingly physical world of Nina Sadur, surely one of the major Russian writers to have emerged since the 1970's. Her prose works and plays are almost literally ‘spellbinding.’” (Elizabeth K. Beaujour, Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature, Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center)

“Sadur’s plays are discomforting; they uproot certainties, allowing deep and ugly forces to disrupt the strained surface of Soviet life. . . . The translations in this new collection of Sadur’s plays were collaborative efforts; together with the introduction, they will allow practitioners to understand the work of an important late Soviet playwright. . . .” (The Times Literary Supplement)

“Peering into the abyss, Nina Sadur leads us into the darkness of the human spirit as the Russian literature of Gogol and Dostoevsky has so often done, connecting with her reader both universally and viscerally. Now for the first time, Nadya L. Peterson provides the English speaking reader and audience access to a series of this remarkable author’s plays.” (Thomas R. Beyer, C.V. Starr Professor of Russian and East European Studies, Middlebury College)

“With Nadya Peterson as editor and main translator, this selection brings Sadur to large new audiences and will probably stand as the best representation of her achievement as a playwright. . . . The language of the volume is well chiseled, the translation flows smoothly. With this admirable achievement, Peterson has performed a commendable service to all Sadur fans and readers of Russian drama, something for which we should be grateful.” (Tatyana Novikov, University of Nebraska-Omaha, The Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature (Vol. 70, No. 2) The Russian Review (Vol. 74, No. 3))

About this edition

• Publisher: Academic Studies Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1618113984
• ISBN 13: 9781618113986
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 204
• Editor: Peterson Nadya L.