Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia

Product Information

Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag, Metropolitan Books, 2012. ISBN 978-0-8050-9522-7

In 2023 Figes' debut play, The Oyster Problem, was produced by the Jermyn Street Theatre in London. The play is about the financial crisis of the writer Gustave Flaubert in the last years of his life and the attempts of his literary friends, George Sand, Emile Zola and Ivan Turgenev, to find him a sinecure. Bob Barrett played the part of Flaubert and Philip Wilson directed. [51] Everything Theatre described The Oyster Problem as "a remarkable pearl of a play; a patchwork of anecdotes that welcomes us into the private life of Gustave Flaubert and his literary contemporaries" [52] Film and television work [ edit ] Figes, Orlando (8 December 2008). "Blog Archive – An open letter to President Medvedev". Index on Censorship. Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil. Anderson, Hephzibah (26 December 2019). "Kate Figes, Feminist Author on Family Life, Dies at 62". The New York Times . Retrieved 6 September 2022.One day, Daantje’s mother tells him there will be a girl waiting for him, someone who dances beautifully. After being abandoned by both parents, Daantje grows up ( Willem Voogd) in an orphanage run by the Church, an experience which leaves him even more distraught and alienated. The turning point occurs when he meets Natasha ( Anastasia Weinmar), an older Russian ballerina, and in an attempt to protect her from one of her previous partners, accidentally kills him. The two go on the run together, and up until this point Jos Stelling’s bold aesthetic and narrative approach works, at least to some extent. This first part is gripping enough and while deeply tragic, the events unfolding on screen are also ‘softened’ by some pleasant light-hearted touches. Under Gorbachev this tendency was allowed extraordinary freedom. At the moment the labour movement is moribund and the writers and painters are no longer the political force they were under tsars and commissars. Disrespect for politicians is pervasive. But a vivacity remains in Russian society despite the discouragements of poverty and lawlessness. Stanford, Peter (8 October 2017). "Those who complained about War and Peace are 'whingers', says historical advisor Orlando Figes". Telegraph.co.uk . Retrieved 8 October 2017.

He is at his exciting best on the 19th and early 20th century. But what about after 1917? Figes traces the careers of Stravinsky, Chagall, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Akhmatova. All his heroes, moreover, suffered under the Soviet system to a greater or lesser extent. But as his book reaches beyond the October Revolution, he ceases to be interested in the influences exerted by "the people" on the cultural elites.Figes was given exclusive access to the letters and other parts of the archive, which is also based on interviews with the couple when they were in their nineties, and the archives of the labour camp itself. Figes raised the finance for the transcription of the letters, which are housed in the Memorial Society in Moscow and will become available to researchers in 2013. According to Figes, "Lev's letters are the only major real-time record of daily life in the Gulag that has ever come to light." [32] The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8050-7461-1, ISBN 0-8050-7461-9, ISBN 978-0-8050-7461-1, ISBN 0-8050-7461-9 a b "Four Documentaries – The Tsar's Last Picture Show". BBC. 22 November 2007 . Retrieved 31 August 2011.

Una premessa che è stata variamente messa in discussione e che gli ha persino attirato la definizione di libro “kitsch”.Orlando Figes gana el Premio Antonio Delgado a la Divulgación de la Propiedad Intelectual". Sgae.es. 3 December 2018 . Retrieved 13 May 2022. Kendall, Bridget (September 2022). "The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes review – what Putin sees in the past". The Guardian. Quotation from the introduction. Kendall, Bridget (1 September 2022). "The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes review – what Putin sees in the past". The Guardian . Retrieved 6 September 2022. Natasha's Dance is Orlando Figes's epic, richly evocative and unparalleled exploration of Russia, its culture and people. Vast in scale and woven through with extraordinary stories and characters, it ranges from the splendour of eighteenth-century St Petersburg to the power of Stalinist propaganda, from folk art to the magic rituals of Asiatic shamans, from the poetry of Pushkin to the music of Mussorgsky and the film of Eisenstein, bringing to life an extraordinary cast of serf artists and aristocrats, revolutionaries and exiles, priests and libertines.