This week, Matt and Cameron (finally) respond to the request of a Patron and tackle "Matryona’s House" by Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn. In this loosely autobiographical story, we follow our unnamed narrator’s time living with the eponymous Matryona in the very interesting town of Peat-Produce as he better understands the dynamic of living in this small town. Ah, and also there are cockroaches. Many, many cockroaches. Have fun!~
Major themes: Cockroaches, Allegories for the USSR, Torfoprodukt
This week, Cameron returns to the beginning of Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s Ukrainian Trilogy with “Zvenihora.” The film, released in 1928, explores a thousand years of Ukrainian history — spanning from Varangian invasion to the rise of the Soviet Union.
This week, Cameron dives into Vasily Grossman's first book of World War II: The People Immortal. Learn about how his writing evolved before writing his own "immortal" books, Stalingrad and LIfe and Fate
Every author starts somewhere. To talk about Chekhov’s earliest published stories, Cameron sits down with Elena Michajlowska and Rosamund Bartlett, editors of a new collection.
