Vladimir Sorokin is an author who needs no introduction. Each of his books invariably provokes a heated public reaction, numerous discussions in the press and on social media, controversies and scandals, and sometimes even legal proceedings (as is the case with the novels 'Blue Lard' and 'Ice'). At the same time, Sorokin is one of the most significant contemporary Russian writers, widely known abroad. In 2001, he was awarded the People's Booker Prize and the Andrei Bely Prize 'For special services to Russian literature.' His books have been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize twice. In 2010, he won the international Gorky Prize and the New Literary Prize, and in 2011 and 2014, he received the second Big Book Prize.
The novel 'Marina's Thirtieth Love' was written between 1982 and 1984, during Andropov's reign. Sorokin was only able to publish it in Russian after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1995.
Moscow, 1983. Marina Alexeyeva teaches music at a community center at a Moscow factory. She never became a pianist herself, due to a broken pinky finger in her youth. Marina's personal life is incredibly eventful: she had just broken up with her partner of 29 years. While waiting for her 30th—true!—love, Marina spends her time moving in dissident circles and criticizing the wretchedness of the ruling regime. Suddenly, Sergei Rumyantsev, the secretary of the factory party committee, appears in her life, and Marina undergoes a fateful, almost Kafkaesque metamorphosis.
Abstract
Vladimir Sorokin's novel 'Marina's Thirtieth Love' was first published in 1995, although it was written ten years earlier, in 1982-1984, although the action of the novel itself takes place in 1983. The main character of the novel is thirty-year-old Marina Alekseeva, a typical representative of the bohemian world of the 1980s, a dissident dissatisfied with the regime, a failed pianist who teaches music at the House of Culture of one of the Moscow factories. Sorokin begins the narrative with a description of Marina's past, including a description of her numerous love affairs. Despite a huge number of partners, both men and women, Marina is unhappy in love and unsuccessfully tries to find her place in this world. Suddenly, the secretary of the factory party committee, Sergei Rumyantsev, appears on her horizon, an affair with whom leads to an unexpected metamorphosis and drastically changes her life...
Authors: Vladimir Sorokin
