The Pushkin House

The Pushkin House by Andrei Bitov was called a classic of postmodernism, the first Russian philological novel, a museum-novel, an epoch-making work… Written in 1964 as the first anti-textbook on literature, it long circulated in unpublished lists and was first... published in the USA in 1978. It immediately became a cult book of a generation, translated into many languages of the world. The main character of the novel, Lev Odoevtsev, a hereditary philologist, heir to a glorious surname, thinks of himself and those around him through the lens of Russian classics. But times and morals have changed significantly, and no one explained to Lev how to live in St. Petersburg in the mid-20th century, while family, friends, and women demand actions and decisions from him… And Russian literature, St. Petersburg (Leningrad), and Russia – all this is, in one way or another, the PUSHKIN HOUSE without its curly lodger Andrei Bitov.