Hunger. A Not-So-Thin Novel

Svetlana Pavlova is a writer, a resident of the Creativity House in Peredelkino, a graduate of the Creative Writing School and WLAG, as well as a master's program in Literary Craft at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. The heroine of the novel "Hunger," Lena, is thirty years old. She has a clear established life: a career, a mortgage, parties, friends. And also — bulimia: for over ten years she has been on a diet, relapses, starves again — and so on in a circle. One day, Lena meets a man suffering from kleptomania. Thus begins the story of mutual healing from an illness that supposedly does not exist, that cannot be treated, and about which it is shameful to talk in society. "Hunger" is a novel about how difficult it is to fight against the standards of beauty and the ideal body; how the idea of self-love transforms from a banality and a truism into a rule of life. "In our country, there are special relationships with food. Food for the older generation was a means through which care was expressed and demonstrated. At the same time, stereotypes in movies and magazines demand that a woman be someone she is not. The heroine of this text found herself in the Procrustean bed of contemporary culture. And this story is a fierce attempt to free herself from everything that makes a woman hate herself." Oksana Vasyakina "It is I/we who stand before the mirror and hate ourselves. But if the heroine managed to escape from this nightmare, then there is hope for us too." Marina Stepanova