Topsy-turvy novel: 100 years of Fedin’s "Cities and Years"
The SPbU Representative Office in Spain invites you to the online lecture "Topsy-turvy novel: 100 years of Fedin’s „Cities and Years“". The lecture will be given by Nikolay Guskov, Associate Professor at the History of Russian Literature Department of St Petersburg University.
Konstantin Fedin’s novel «Cities and Years», published in 1924, was considered by contemporaries to be one of the most important works of its time. It was translated into many languages, including Spanish, and enjoyed great success both in the author’s homeland and abroad.
The book was highly praised by Soviet, émigré and foreign critics. Today, however, Cities and Years is known only to a small circle of readers. This is largely due to Fedin’s controversial reputation associated with his activities as chairman of the Union of Writers from the 1950s to the 1970s.
The novel is known for its unusual structure, which can be confusing for the uninitiated reader. The chapters, named after the places and years of the events they describe, are arranged in such a way that the narrative begins with the finale of the plot, and the sequence of events becomes clear only gradually.
"Cities and Years" is a vivid example of Russian modernist prose, combining the theories of the OPOJAZ linguistic and literary movement and the principles of the Serapion Brotherhood literary group with the traditions of Russian and Western European romantic and realistic literature. The novel tells the story of the destinies of several remarkable characters during a tragic period of radical changes in the world, against the background of the First World War and the Russian Civil War.
Lecturer
Nikolay Guskov graduated from the Russian Department of the Philology Faculty of SPbU in 1995 and defended his doctoral thesis in 1999. Since 2003, he has been working at the Department of the History of Russian Literature at St Petersburg University, and since 2010, he has held the academic title of Associate Professor. He has taught literature at secondary schools and in international projects at universities in Florence, Hamburg, Jena and Wroclaw. He regularly participates in academic conferences and is the author of 87 published works, including a monograph and a textbook.
Guskov’s research interests include Russian literature from the mid-18th to the mid-20th centuries, the history of drama, theatre and cinema, literary life, literary regional studies, children’s literature and Italian-Russian literary relations.
The lecture will be streamed online in Russian with simultaneous translation into Spanish as part of the celebration of the 300th anniversary of SPbU — Russia’s oldest university.