Ludmila Ulitskaya and the Art of Tolerance

Novelist Ludmila Ulitskaya is a crucial cultural figure in contemporary Russia, garnering both literary awards and best-seller status. Engaging with the past to combat the creeping authoritarianism of the Putin era, she has become the latest in a long line of Russian dissident authors championing the values of liberalism and tolerance while critiquing the state. Ludmila Ulitskaya and the Art of Tolerance is the first English-language book about this influential writer, contextualizing her in the shifting landscape of post-Soviet society and culture.
Drawing on interviews with Ulitskaya and sources not readily available to Western scholars, Elizabeth A. Skomp and Benjamin M. Sutcliffe explore the ethical ideals that make Ulitskaya’s novels resonate in today’s Russia-tolerance, sincerity, and diversity-and examine how she uses innovative imagery to personalize history through a focus on body and kinship. This is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary Russian literature and society.

Elizabeth A. Skomp is an associate professor and chair of the Russian Department at Sewanee: The University of the South, and director of its Interdisciplinary Humanities Program. Benjamin M. Sutcliffe is an associate professor of Russian and faculty associate of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, both at Miami University of Ohio. He is the author of The Prose of Life: Russian Women Writers from Khrushchev to Putin, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press.