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reject consumerism and modern society’s other dogmas
IT'S TIME by Pavel Kostin
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Pavel Kostin’s style is very romantic, there is no cynicism or vulgarity there. His lone, freedom seeking heroes reject consumerism and modern society’s other dogmas. There is such unique elegance in Pavel’s writing. Very admirable to see such qualities in a contemporary writer who just turned twenty five.
Roxanita, Barcelona, Spain
IT’S TIME (Время Пришло) by Pavel Kostin (Russian Edition)
ISBN 9781907832215
Set on the shores of the Baltic Sea, on rooftops lit with mesmerizing orange sunset and in the darkest corners of urban night. We find real characters there with depth and ideas searching for direction in their fragile lives and learning to express their ideas through art. Also available in English translation by James Rann, read more here >
From up on the roof, you can see everything. You can see life scurrying below you, and see it with a calm objectivity. No prejudices, no assumptions. That’s what Max, the compelling narrator does: even when he is not sitting on a rooftop, he looks at life with intelligent curiosity, amiable openness and good-humoured equanimity. Max is not only a great companion for the reader — a calm presence at the centre of events — but the perfect lens through which to see a hidden world.
Through Max we meet a succession of intriguing characters-artists and dreamers with their own unique perspectives on life and formulas for happiness: Viktor, the photographer who finds beauty in the mundane; inscrutable Tanya, whose mystery attracts Max as much as her smile; Pyos, an artist who lost ability to see people around him and lives in a disappearing tower; Oksana, forever entangled in spontaneous and dangerous affairs; Gray, connoisseur of street-art and magic. And, at the centre of it all, the enigmatic Lady F, who appears out of nowhere to give Max little bits of comfort and advice. Her clairvoyant yet cryptic intimations lead Max, and us, through a procession of coincidences, adventures, and miraculous escapes. Who is she? Guardian angel, Lady Luck, hallucination? Whoever she is, her wry and wise interchanges with Max are one of the novel’s real pleasures. Whispers of magic get louder and louder, but, thanks to Kostin’s clear and sober prose, with its amused detachment and adroit lyrical touches, we never stray into the world of fantasy or stock-in-trade magic realism.
Pavel’s latest novel is more than just a product of his own imagination. According to his introduction, the book is written on the walls of his home city, Kaliningrad, by the city itself and by the street-artists living there. His new heroes are extraordinary young romantics, using their art to express ideas, not unlike our home grown talent in London including Banksy, Ben Eine, Cityzen Kane, C215, Roa. These characters are secretive. They live in their own world with their own philosophy and outlook on life. But how does one become such urban romantic? We see a freedom seeking artist in Pavel’s new novel, we see his journey, his adventures, his dilemmas and his choices. What would you choose? The comfort of daily routine or the free spirit of art? For Pavel’s characters this becomes a question of life and death.
Order “IT’S TIME” in Russian
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A Hero of Our Time
A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov
Lermontov’s only full-scale novel, which prophetically describes the duel in which he later lost his own life. The hero of the novel, Pechorin is an intense individual, a military officer who kidnaps beautiful daughter of Circassian tribesman and who, according to Lermantov’s own introduction, is a composite portrait, made up of all the vices which flourish, full grown, amongst the generation of the time.
On July 25, 1841, at Pyatigorsk, fellow soldier Nikolai Martynov, who had been the butt of Lermontov’s jokes, challenged Lermontov to a duel. The duel took place two days later at the foot of Mashuk mountain. Lermontov deliberately chose the edge of a precipice for the duel, so that if either combatant was wounded, he would fall and his fate would be sealed. Lermontov was killed by Martynov’s first shot. Much of his best verse was posthumously discovered in his pocket-book.
This edition is a new revision aiming to bring English translation as close as possible to Lermontov’s original vision. There has been some confusion in various English editions containing entries of Pechorin’s diary, not present in Lermontov’s original and various other alterations of Lermnontov’s original structure of the novel. This edition has been compiled after close examination of Russian originals and follows author’s intended structure. Released under Urban Romantics imprint , aiming to give readers a complete experience of both classic and contemporary romantic writing.
About The Author
Mikhail Lermontov 1814 – 1841, a Russian Romantic writer and poet, sometimes called the poet of the Caucasus, was the most important presence in Russian poetry after Alexander Pushkin’s death until his own death in a duel four years later, at the age of 26. Lermontov’s life is one of the most epic and dramatic in the history of literature. After attacking the tsar as complicit in the de facto assassination of Pushkin, Lermontov himself fell in a duel that many believe was also the work of a tsarist conspiracy designed to silence nascent rebellion. His major works, which can be readily quoted from memory by many Russians, suffer from the generally poor quality of translation from Russian to English – Lermontov therefore, remains largely unknown to English-speaking readers.
Reviews
This study of a man – and a society – in crisis was to become one of the most important books of its time… I have read this novel several times, young and old, always hooked’ – Doris Lessing
No one in Russia has ever written such prose, so precise, so beautiful, so exquisite. – Nikolai Gogol
Still just a boy, and he wrote A Hero of Our Time! – Anton Chekhov
In A Hero of Our Time, Lermontov managed to create a fictional person whose romantic dash to cynicism, tiger-like suppleness and eagle eye, hot blood and cool head, tenderness and taciturnity, elegance and brutality, delicacy of perception and harsh passion to dominate, ruthlessness and awareness of it, are of lasting appeal to readers of all countries and centuries. – Vladimir Nabokov
Where to Order
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