Ludmila's Broken English: A Novel


Book Description

"A mix of offbeat composition and intoxicating insight....A maddeningly entertaining encore."—Publishers Weekly, starred review A wild and brilliant tale by the winner of the Man Booker Prize and one of our most original storytellers. On a Tuesday in terror-struck London, Blair and Bunny Heath become the first adult conjoined twins ever successfully separated. On a Tuesday in the war-torn Caucasus, Ludmila Derev accidentally kills her grandfather. By December, they find themselves trudging together through a snow field, staring down the barrel of a rebel's gun. Ludmila sets out on a journey west to save her family from starvation and marauding Gnez troops. Hers is an odyssey of sour wit, even sourer vodka, and a Soviet tractor probably running on goat's piss. The Heath twins are released from a newly privatized institution rumored to have been founded for an illegitimate royal baby. They are plunged into a round-the-clock world churning with opportunity, rowdy with the chatter of freedom, self-empowerment, and sex. Dangerous cocktails and a Russian Brides Web site throw these unforgettable characters together with explosive results. DBC Pierre's second novel confirms his place in the ranks of today's most audacious and acclaimed novelists.







The Athenaeum


Book Description




A Study Guide for DBC Pierre's "Vernon God Little"


Book Description

A Study Guide for DBC Pierre's "Vernon God Little," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Literary Newsmakers for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Literary Newsmakers for Students for all of your research needs.




The Funeral Party


Book Description

August 1991. In a sweltering New York City apartment, a group of Russian émigrés gathers round the deathbed of an artist named Alik, a charismatic character beloved by them all, especially the women who take turns nursing him as he fades from this world. Their reminiscences of the dying man and of their lives in Russia are punctuated by debates and squabbles: Whom did Alik love most? Should he be baptized before he dies, as his alcoholic wife, Nina, desperately wishes, or be reconciled to the faith of his birth by a rabbi who happens to be on hand? And what will be the meaning for them of the Yeltsin putsch, which is happening across the world in their long-lost Moscow but also right before their eyes on CNN? This marvelous group of individuals inhabits the first novel by Ludmila Ulitskaya to be published in English, a book that was shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize and has been praised wherever translated editions have appeared. Simultaneously funny and sad, lyrical in its Russian sorrow and devastatingly keen in its observation of character, The Funeral Party introduces to our shores a wonderful writer who captures, wryly and tenderly, our complex thoughts and emotions confronting life and death, love and loss, homeland and exile.




Murder as a Second Language


Book Description

"With her bookstore, the Book Depot, being run by a competent graduate student, Claire Malloy is at loose ends. Her attempt to learn French cooking meets with dismay, so when her daughter, Caron, and Caron's friend Inez sign up to tutor English-as-a-second-language students to beef up their college applications, Claire offers to help tutor. After being turned down as a tutor since she missed the training session, Claire is roped into becoming a board member of the Farberville Literacy Council. She soon learns there are problems with the council's books, and then an elderly Polish student, Ludmilla, is murdered at the council's office. The unpleasant Ludmilla's death is not even mourned by her own grandson, so there are plenty of suspects. As Claire investigates, she uncovers other nefarious deeds that have transpired among the employees of the literacy council, and she becomes a target." --




Born Together: The Story of Conjoined Twins


Book Description

Born Together explores the fascinating and rare phenomenon of conjoined twins in both humans and animals.




Medea and Her Children


Book Description

Medea Georgievna Sinoply Mendez is an iconic figure in her Crimean village, the last remaining pure-blooded Greek in a family that has lived on that coast for centuries. Childless Medea is the touchstone of a large family, which gathers each spring and summer at her home. There are her nieces (sexy Nike and shy Masha), her nephew Georgii (who shares Medea’s devotion to the Crimea), and their friends. In this single summer, the languor of love will permeate the Crimean air, hearts will be broken, and old memories will float to consciousness, allowing us to experience not only the shifting currents of erotic attraction and competition, but also the dramatic saga of this family amid the forces of dislocation, war, and upheaval of twentieth-century Russian life.




Memory, Language, and Bilingualism


Book Description

A comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to the study of memory, language and cognitive processing across various populations of bilingual speakers.




Ludmila's Broken English


Book Description

Determined to save her family from starvation, Ludmila Derev appears on a Russian bride website. Thousands of miles to the west, the Heath twins are separated after spending thirty-three years conjoined at the abdomen. This book charts this unlikely meeting between East and West in a picaresque with the flavours of British bacon and Russian vodka.