Happy Birthday Uncle Gilya!

[Paul Richardson]

Russian Life Books is pleased to announce the release of the first-ever English translation of Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic memoir, "Moscow and Muscovites," to coincide with the great journalist's 158th birthday today.

"Moscow and Muscovites" is a largely first-person account of life in the Russian capital in the decades between the emancipation of the serfs and the Bolshevik Revolution. “It is a spectacular verbal pastiche,” said Brendan Kiernan, the book’s translator. “It has everything: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin.”

Gilyarovsky guides readers on an energetic tour (filled with hilarious anecdotes, shameless name-dropping, and relentless editorializing) through every layer of pre-revolutionary society: into slums and gambling dens, brothels and prisons, through public baths (banyas) and firehouses, and inside the capital’s best (and worst) restaurants, clubs and taverns. The result is a richly textured, humorous and insightful look at everyday life in Moscow. 

The book contains the entirety of the original 1926 edition, full text of all poems and song lyrics in Russian as well as English, nearly 300 footnotes, 88 images, an index and two locator maps.

To read more about the book, visit
http://store.russianlife.com/moscow-and-muscovites/

Paul Richardson
Publisher
Russian Life Books
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