ULITSKAYA, Ludmila 1943-

PERSONAL:

Born 1943, in Bashkiria, Siberia, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Education: Studied genetics at Moscow State University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Moscow, Russia. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Schocken Books, Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER:

Biologist and writer of film scripts and prose works.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Russian Booker Prize shortlist, Medici Prize for foreign fiction (France), 1995, and Penne Prize (Italy), 1998, all for Sonechka; Russian Booker Prize, 2001, for Kazus Kukotskogo.

WRITINGS:

Sonechka, Novy Mir, 1992, translation by Arch Tait published as Sonechka and Other Stories, Glas Publishers (Birmingham, England), 1998.

Bednye Rodstvenniki, Izd-vo Slovo (Moscow, Russia), 1994.

Medeia i Ee Deti: Povesti, Vagrius (Moscow, Russia), 1996, translation by Arch Tait published as Medea and Her Children, Schocken Books (New York, NY), 2002.

Veselye Pokhorony: Poest' i Rasskazy (stories), Vagrius (Moscow, Russia), 1998, translation by Cathy Porter published as The Funeral Party, Schocken Books (New York, NY), 2001.

Kazus Kukotskogo, EKSMO-Press (Moscow, Russia), 2000.

Pikovaia Dama i Drugie: Rasskazy (stories), Vagrius (Moscow, Russia), 2001.

Devochki, EKSMO-Press (Moscow, Russia), 2002.

Also author of Skvoznava liniya (short stories), and Mily Shurik (novel), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

Acclaimed by some critics as Russia's best contemporary novelist, Ludmila Ulitskaya did not achieve literary recognition until she reached her fifties. Trained as a biologist, she lost her scientific accreditation from the Soviet state when she translated Leon Uris's novel Exodus, a banned book, into Russian. Ulitskaya later worked in a theater and began writing film scripts. Her own short stories and novellas, which she had been writing all her life, began to be published in Russia in the late 1980s. Critics have described her work as deeply humane, morally serious, and straightforward in technique—qualities that have earned the writer comparisons with Tolstoy. Unlike many leading Russian writers who emphasize absurdity and violence, Ulitskaya, according to World Literature Today contributor Bonnie C. Marshall, writes in the nineteenth-century tradition.

The novella Sonechka, which won the Medici Prize in France and the Penn Prize in Italy, follows the complex relationships within a family in mid-1900s Russia. The title character accepts her husband's infidelity and even assumes responsibility for his young mistress after he suddenly dies. Throughout it all, she considers herself blessed with immense happiness. Margaret Ziolkowski in World Literature Today found this strength of character, which is a common theme in Ulitskaya's fiction, "both credible and moving."

The Funeral Party, Ulitskaya's first novel to appear in English, was widely admired for its psychological depth and what Review of Contemporary Fiction contributor Michael Pinker called its "exquisite irony and tenderness." The novel is structured around the death in New York City of an exiled Russian artist, Alik. His wife, lovers, and friends gather at his bedside to say good-bye. What emerges, according to New York Times Book Review critic M. G. Lord, is a "deft, economical portrait of an engaging set of characters whose behavior, though occasionally screwball, is never one-dimensional. For Ulitskaya's book is also a meditation on Russian identity and the degree to which that identity can be sustained." Indeed, Alik never really left Russia because he "'built his Russia around him, a Russia which hadn't existed for a long time and perhaps never had.'"

Both Lord and Marshall pointed out the parallels between The Funeral Party and Tolstoy's novella "The Death of Ivan Ilyich." Marshall felt that Ulitskaya's "positive portrait of Alik is less convincing than Tolstoy's negative portrait of Ivan Ilyich" because Alik's considerable flaws cast doubt on the high esteem in which his friends hold him. Lord, on the other hand, suggested that Ulitskaya "seems to have set up deliberate parallels with [Tolstoy's] well-known work in order to make points about how the Soviet experience changed Russian life." Lord observed that Ulitskaya sets Alik's death against the televised backdrop of the 1991 attempted coup that ultimately drove Gorbachev from power, and that her characters, although they are "newly-minted Americans," cannot stop watching these events unfolding in their emotional homeland.

Critics also admired the humor and insight of The Funeral Party. A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that "Ulitskaya is adept at capturing the subtle nuances of thought and experience, expressing both human spirit and flaws without false sentimentality." A contributor to Russian Life hailed the novel as a "marvelous" and "delightful" work with "great emotional power." Lisa Rohrbaugh, in Library Journal, praised its "beautiful, lyrical prose," and Lord concluded by commending the "riotously funny" novel as a "quirky, tender story whose themes of love, loss, and identity soar over the boundaries of language and geography."

In Medea and Her Children, Ulitskaya presents a multi-generational family saga set in the Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea where Medea's Greek ancestors settled along with a diverse mix of Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, and Armenians. The novel is set during the summer of 1976, when Medea, a widow without children, awaits a visit from her scattered nieces and nephews. "The glow of nostalgia illuminates the novel's portrait of the détente decade," wrote New York Times Book Review contributor Ken Kalfus, who noted that the novel is "written with contagious affection for the peninsula's untamed landscape and easygoing people." As Medea welcomes her guests, Ulitskaya describes the eventful course of the family's history, going all the way back to the beginning of the century and tracing its many geographic moves, amorous adventures, heartbreaks, and triumphs.

Though Kalfus faulted the English translation for its literal adherence to literary Russian's elevated diction, he admired Medea and Her Children itself as an "evocative and intricate story." Reviewers for Publishers Weekly and Booklist expressed similar enthusiasm, praising the novel for its boisterous humor and lively writing. In Kirkus Reviews, however, a critic found the narrative "impossibly convoluted" and "as fascinating and tangled as an old woman's fireside reminiscences … striking, but badly out of focus." Mary Brennan in Seattle Times also noted the narrative's many complex strands, but considered these integral to a book that "offers rich rewards."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 1, 2001, Frank Caso, review of The Funeral Party, p. 919; November 15, 2002, Frank Caso, review of Medea and Her Children, p. 570.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2002, review of Medea and Her Children, p. 1347.

Library Journal, January 1, 2001, Lisa Rohrbaugh, review of The Funeral Party, p. 158.

New York Times Book Review, February 11, 2001, M. G. Lord, review of The Funeral Party, p. 18; November 17, 2002, Ken Kalfus, review of Medea and Her Children, p. 15.

Publishers Weekly, December 18, 2000, review of The Funeral Party, p. 57; November 4, 2002, review of Medea and Her Children, p. 63.

Review of Contemporary Fiction, fall, 2001, Michael Pinker, review of The Funeral Party, pp. 213-214.

Russian Life, March, 2001, review of The Funeral Party, p. 60.

Seattle Times, January 5, 2003, Mary Brennan, review of Medea and Her Children.

Times Literary Supplement, March 12, 1999, Sarah A. Smith, review of Sonechka and Other Stories, p. 33.

World Literature Today, spring, 1999, Margaret Ziolkowski, review of Sonechka and Other Stories, p. 354; autumn, 2000, Bonnie C. Marshall, review of The Funeral Party, p. 882.*