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Geographer Drank Away His Globe
Geograf globus propil
Novel,
2005
512 pp
Publishers: Azbooka, St Petersburg
Rights sold to:
France: Librairie Artheme Fayard
Netherlands: Meulenhoff
Lithuania: Alma Littera
Bulgaria: Infodar
TV series rights (for a 4-series film) sold |
Bestseller: over 50,000 copies sold
Complete French translation is available
Synopsys
With his latest bestseller, Alexei Ivanov has secured his position as number one moral spokesman for Russia’s Generation X, as Bret Easton Ellis once was for America and Michel Houellebecq for France.
Geographer Drank Away His Globe is a poignant narrative about Victor Sluzhkin, 28-year old romantic and buffoon, who signs on as a teacher of geography in a secondary school in his native Perm (in the Urals) and gets lost in a haze of hard vodka, desperate love for a nymphet-like student, the stress of educating troubled teenagers with attitude like those in Irina Denezhkina’s short stories, and twisted family relationships.
Geographer, as the older students immediately dub Sluzhkin, attempts to escape from the grueling, dull, economically and emotionally stultifying reality of Russia’s provincial life in a rafting tour to the Urals. Accompanied by wild, adventure-seeking adolescents, faced with the numerous grim surprises of the taiga, icy mountain rivers, and local drunks, Geographer is poised to find himself and his own truth. Armed with his only moral principle, “Be a man, and whatever will be will be,” Geographer is unaware that his future is to become another living echo of Houellebecq’s prediction in TO STAY ALIVE: “As you approach the truth, your solitude will only increase.” -
Ivanov’s novel is at once an engaging page-turner and a remarkable literary achievement. Ivanov maneuvers masterfully between a confessional erotic story, a Bildungsroman or coming-of-age story, an adventure story, and a vivid psychological account. This simple personal narrative is written with a sincerity that is both tender and compelling. It is an illuminating book for anyone who has ever known isolation and the pull of desperate longing.
Praise for the novel:
“Bad books are written for the masses; good books – for the chosen few. Alexei Ivanov, a young museum employee from Perm, has managed to write a brilliant book for a large readership. This is an utterly funny and extremely sad book. It is a story about schools today, about love between a teacher and an upper-grade student, about a world that continues to “glow with eternal beauty” even in times of inflation and economic reform.” - Leonid Yuzefovich
“Ivanov has written a brilliant novel about a life. GEOGRAPHER teaches a simple and obvious moral: “be a man—and whatever will be, will be…” Ivanov has created a firm edifice that can even endure the pressure of words of love, which here sound neither false nor awkward.” - Afisha
“Ivanov so brilliantly renders the atmosphere of a slough of despond that the reader’s soul starts bubbling with sage-green sobs.” - TimeOut
“It’s a novel about teachers, students and alcoholics. About nymphets and a mean department head in a Perm school. About rampant alcoholism and purity. About the acute ennui of provincial life and loathsome daily routine. GEOGRAPHER is a masterfully written, refreshing book. Its freshness comes from the complicity of the reader: as if you are the one smoking on the balcony, watching teenagers in the yard. It’s sunset. And the boredom is deadly.” - Knizhnaya Vitrina
“This novel tells of true wonders that outshine dull, quotidian existence and every imaginable hardship. GEOGRAPHER should be compulsory reading in the curriculum of contemporary literature studies.” - litwomen.ru
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