Présentation de l'éditeur
Lizka is a young Russian living an unexciting life in a backward rural town. After her first fleeting and unsatisfactory sexual experience sets the locals? tongues wagging, she moves to a larger town ? G ? in search of a new life ? and love. As she moves from one relationship to another, her ?men? include a local con-man, a powerful Party official (later the local governor), a trolleybus driver, a belligerent young army veteran and, ultimately, a poet, the narrator of the story, who finally takes her away from G. In keeping with our heroine?s own character, and in the tradition of the great Russian writers, Ikonnikov draws out the tragic-comic nature of his characters and their obsessions, and presents the reader with a wonderfully detailed picture of provincial Russian characters, habits, opinions and desires.
Revue de presse
?With his first full length novel, this talented young writer has succeeded in producing both a detailed psychological study of a young na?ve girl?s transition into a fully fledged confident woman and a true reflection of Russian character and behaviour of the last 35 years? Kulturnews
Biographie de l'auteur
Alexander Ikonnikov was born in 1974 in Urshum near Kirov on Lake Viatka. Having finished his German studies, Ikonnikow was due to do military service. Military service had little appeal for him - this was during the war in Afghanistan - so he opted for the civilian option. In his job interview, the officer said to him 'well you have chosen your moment well, they are looking for a teacher of English in Bystritza'. Ikonnikov made the point that he was a German scholar and knew not a word of English. The military man answered 'So what? What difference does it make?' Thus, he spent two years teaching English in Bystritza, watching the snow fall in a despairing landscape where nothing moves and where the only goal of the locals is to find how to pay for the next bottle of vodka. After this 'edifying' episode in his life which could come straight from his fiction, Ikonnikov moves to Kirov. There he worked as a journalist, a job he gave up to devote himself to writing full time. Lizka and Her Men is the first of Ikonnikov's works to be translated into English.
