Siberian Education Paperback by Nicolai Lilin, Translated by Jonathan Hunt

Product Details

• Publisher: Emblem Editions (2011-09-06)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 464 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780771050282
• Item Weight: 425.25 grams
• Dimensions: 20.27 x 13.16 x 3.12 cm

A vivid, shocking, at times poetic revelation of a world we never imagined existed. Siberian Education is a real-life Eastern Promises seen through the eyes of a boy growing up in the close-knit community of the Urkas, descendants of criminals relocated from Siberia to the banks of the Dniester River, between Moldavia and Ukraine, in the 1930s. A tale of an extreme boyhood — violent, governed by rules of honour passed down through legend and taught via elaborate and mysterious tattoos, and ultimatedly doomed to disappear amidst post-Soviet capitalist gangsterism: an utterly unique look at a vanished society from someone who knew it intimately, even though he is not yet 30 years old.

About the Author

NICOLAI LILIN was born in 1981 and grew up in the small Soviet republic of Transnistria, which declared its independence from the Russian federation in 1991, although Russia has never recognized this. As a young adult, Nicolai was conscripted into the Russian army and sent to fight in Chechnya. He later became a fisherman off the coast of Ireland, before moving to Italy where he currently runs a tattoo parlour in Turin. Siberian Education is his first book.

JONATHAN HUNT was born in Portsmouth in 1951. He has taught at the universities of Munich, Cambridge, and Turin, and his translations from the Italian include Niccolo Ammaniti's I'm Not Scared and Steal You Away, and Carlo Petrini's Slow Food Nation.