Hospital for Failed Poets: A Look Inside the Literary World

Marusya Klimova — one of the most extraordinary and original Russian writers of the last three decades, author of shocking autobiographical novels, the provocative "My History of Russian Literature", a subverter of authorities, editor of the countercultural magazine "Dantes", and holder of

the prestigious European award for achievements in the field of culture: the French Order of Literature and Arts. Her translations of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Jean Genet, Pierre Guyotat, and other great heirs of the tradition of cursed poets in modern French literature are also widely known. In recent years, Marusya Klimova has increasingly turned to the genre of stylized diary entries: "Mad Darkness" (2013), "The Profile of Hölderlin on the Leg of an English Poet" (2016), "Cold and Alienation" (2019).

In her new book, Marusya Klimova delves even deeper into the world of metaphors and images, where reality is almost indistinguishable from art, and the fate of words is more important than human life. The most dramatic events, when viewed from the perspective of eternity, often take on comic outlines, while the country cottage, which Marusya, never ceasing to feel like a decadent and marginal figure, disdainfully calls the main symbol of bourgeois prosperity, becomes for her a kind of ivory tower, where the writer tries to find shelter from annoying people and the endless stream of news that reminds her of the chaos, decline, and destruction reigning around.