Books · Mores · Ethnography
The tale of the girl with a pig's features has been current in Europe since time out of mind. The urban legend, in one version or another, told of a pregnant woman cursed by a beggar-woman because the haughty rich lady had likened the beggar's
Cinema · Books · Observations · Pop Culture · Saint Petersburg
Since everyone is so delighted with the Soviet "Lord of the Rings" that Channel Five has put online, I suggest watching the Soviet "Hobbit" as well, with a more starry cast and a truly epic Gollum. Zinovy Gerdt is the narrator, Ivan Krasko is Gandalf, Mikhail
NB! · In the Press · Books · Moscow
The Parnassian Mockingbird has made the top 100 books at the Non/fiction intellectual literature fair, and at the AST stand they said it had sold out as early as yesterday. But should you need it, the book is still available in the shops and online
Books · Nature · Ethnography
John Tanner, in his narrative "Thirty Years Among the Indians", relates a curious detail which may undoubtedly bear witness to the hunting role of cries in remote antiquity:. at the piercing war whoop of the Indians a bison might fall into a swoon, and a bear might flee
Art · Books · Paris · People
The French surgeon Samuel-Jean de Pozzi (1846-1918) is sometimes called one of the handsomest men of his day. In his university years he even earned the nickname Siren. Pozzi's life was a most entertaining one, and it is no accident that Julian Barnes devoted his latest
NB! · In the Press · Books · Pop Culture · Humour
News from the world of books. Nastya Ivleeva and the Parnassian Mockingbird 🥰
Archive · Books · Observations · Mores
Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam has a recollection of how she and her husband chanced upon namesakes in a watchmaker's workshop in Yalta. While writing out a receipt, the watchmaker was stunned to hear his own surname from his customers. He invited the Mandelstams to his home and told them
Cinema · Books · Pop Culture
The Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez was a close friend of the singer Shakira and admired her work, saying that the personal stamp in her music made her unlike anything else, and that Shakira performs, dances and sings with a particular sensuality that seems to have been invented by her.
Archive · Books
The Nobel laureate in literature John Galsworthy, in a letter to the English translator of Russian literature Constance Garnett, who first introduced the English-speaking public to the texts of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov
Books · Observations
When the English novelist Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was asked to write an article on the twelve best novels in world literature, he replied that all twelve had been written by Russian authors, and six of them came from the pen of a single man, Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev: "Virgin
Art · Books · People
Portrait of Louise Germaine de Staël (1766-1817), painted in 1812 by Vladimir Lukich Borovikovsky, when Madame de Staël was visiting Russia and warmly supporting the struggle against Napoleon
Faith · Books · Society · People
Christine de Pizan's (1364-1430) book "The City of Ladies" (1405) opens with the writer's account of how she was ashamed to be a woman, since women make men's lives so unbearable. Christine confesses that she fell into despair and felt herself