books about books?`

[Anne Fisher]

Thanks to all for their suggestions of "books about books," especially from
contemporary popular fiction.
Tatyana, the Links and Gursky novels are great leads. Do you know if there
is a whole contemporary sub-genre of "bibliomystery" in Russian as there is
in English (for examples see http://www.librarything.com/tag/bibliomystery)?
I wasn't thinking of Master and Margarita simply because for me that story
is more about the act of writing a book, i.e. about authorship and
creativity, than about a book per se (but I know that this is a very
debatable point).

Right now I'm thinking about stories dealing with the consumers of books -
would there a Russian version of A. S. Byatt's "Possession" out there (hmm,
which poets' illicit love affair is left to discover, even fictionally)?

Or, if we want to talk about the production side of things, there is
Michelle Lovric's "The Floating Book," a titillating story of love and lust
and printing, set in immediately-post-Gutenberg Venice (although it's often
more romance novel than it is historical fiction). Any racy historical
fiction about Ivan Fyodorov out there? I don't see him attracting quite the
female attention that Lovric's printer does, but he did have a lot of
adventure in his life.

Or even something like Markus Zusak's "The Book Thief" (young adult
historical fiction in which German girl helps Jew hide from SS, she steals
books for him to read, he teaches her to read and makes her a handmade book,
etc. One of the only books I've read narrated by Death.)

Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" is also a
great story of an entire publishing industry, but I'm not sure what the
closest Soviet or Russian pop culture industry equivalent could even be...

At any rate, these are some of the books about books that are out there in
English. Thanks for your suggestions of Russian books on books.

Annie

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