Böcker av Andrew Baruch Wachtel

More than any other art form, literature defined Eastern Europe as a cultural and political entity in the second half of the twentieth century. Although often persecuted by the state, East European writers' voices were heard and revered inside and outside their countries. This study considers the effects of the end of communism on such writers.

For most English-speaking readers, Russian literature consists of a small number of individual writers - nineteenth-century masters such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev - or a few well-known works - Chekhov's plays, Brodsky's poems, and perhaps Master and Margarita and Doctor Zhivago from the twentieth century.

Expectation is an integral part of the reading experience. Drama is a particularly rich and rewarding field for studying the complex ways in which such expectations are created. This book explores these expectations through the lens of twentieth-century Russian drama.