Persisting in Folly: Russian Writers in Search of Wisdom, 1963-2013

Description:

Foolishness has long occupied a prominent place in Russian culture, touching on key questions of national, spiritual, and intellectual identity. Combining close readings with a contextual framework, this book offers a wide-ranging consideration of the causes and consequences of modern Russian literature's enduring quest for wisdom through folly.

Review Quotes: «Any idiot can list idiots, but it takes a steady taxonomical touch to raise the fool to the level of national treasure - to canonize him, or at least wield him like a can-opener on a literature that has so far stayed sealed. Luckily for us, such a touch is exactly what Oliver Ready demonstrates in his new survey, Persisting in Folly: Russian Writers in Search of Wisdom, 1963-2013. His invaluable book accomplishes two critical functions, first defining the traditional figure of the Russian fool, and then following him through what remains a largely uncharted region of world literature: late- and post-Soviet Russian fiction.»
(Josh Billings, Los Angeles Review of Books, Nov. 2017)

Read the full review here

«[...] Oliver Ready's painstaking unravelling of the interaction between individual thought and cultural patterns will be of value to anyone trying to understand the fate of not just the Russian intellectual in recent decades.»
(Rajendra A. Chitnis, TLS The Times Literary Supplement April 2018)

Read the review here