Russian Prose 2007: What Russian Students Read

This course will focus on prose works that were 2007 ‘short list’ nominees for the Russian Booker Prize, the most prestigious Russian literary prize today. Parallel with this short list prepared by an expert jury, student representatives from several Russian universities prepared their own ‘short list’, the so-called Student Booker. Student choices corresponded with the expert jury’s selections by half. Thus the Student Booker provides a sense of what current Russian books have attracted the attention of student-age readers today. For this course we will read Ludmila Ulitskaya’s Daniel Stein – perevodchik (Daniel Stein – Translator), which just won the prestigious Russian Great Book award; Maya Kucherskaya’s Bog dozhdia (Rain God); and other leading prose works from 2007. Students will write three short response papers and a final exam