February 20, 2020

From Russia With Love, and Coronavirus


From Russia With Love, and Coronavirus
Apparently quarantine has been a good place to meet potential partners for a long time, as this 1911 London News illustration of a restricted Romanian village demonstrates. Frédéric De Haenen (1853-1928) based on sketches by Rook Carnegie (1860-1908), Wikimedia Commons

Forbidden love? Romantic. Russia? Romantic, sometimes. Quarantine from a deadly epidemic? Decidedly unromantic. But that hasn't stopped two Russian teenagers.

Inna Savintseva and Daniil Parfenovich, both eighteen, reportedly met while waiting for the evacuation plane from Wuhan, China. Sent to Tyumen for quarantine, their love has apparently blossomed, and, of course, been documented on social media.

While they were, sadly, unable to spend Valentine's Day together (what with the, y'know, quarantine and all), they do have plans to unite outside the hospital and explore the city once their isolation is lifted. Ah, young love.

Russia has had a very severe response to the coronavirus crisis, closing its border with China and imposing strict measures to prevent the spread of the disease. That hasn't, however, stopped another young Russian from escaping imposed medical custody.

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Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

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Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

This is the work that made Chekhov, launching his career as a writer and playwright of national and international renown. Retranslated and updated, this new bilingual edition is a super way to improve your Russian.
93 Untranslatable Russian Words

93 Untranslatable Russian Words

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Turgenev Bilingual

Turgenev Bilingual

A sampling of Ivan Turgenev's masterful short stories, plays, novellas and novels. Bilingual, with English and accented Russian texts running side by side on adjoining pages.
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The Moscow Eccentric

Advance reviewers are calling this new translation "a coup" and "a remarkable achievement." This rediscovered gem of a novel by one of Russia's finest writers explores some of the thorniest issues of the early twentieth century.
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White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
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Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar

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At the Circus (bilingual)

At the Circus (bilingual)

This wonderful novella by Alexander Kuprin tells the story of the wrestler Arbuzov and his battle against a renowned American wrestler. Rich in detail and characterization, At the Circus brims with excitement and life. You can smell the sawdust in the big top, see the vivid and colorful characters, sense the tension build as Arbuzov readies to face off against the American.

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