Having been disabused of his notion of the magnificence of life in the Soviet Union, he comes to imagine how he might kill the monster who sits vulnerable before him.
Stalin's Barber ( Foreword INDIES Finalist) — Foreword Reviews
But like Nabokov, Levitt is smart enough to inject a kind of horrible comedy into the situation: Nabokov would likely have known that Kharkov had been a particularly bloody prize in that war, having been traded back and forth between White and Red Army forces. He contemplates killing the man. As he begins to shave his former interrogator, the barber reveals who he is, and then….
Go read it for yourself. The Post review describes how the man,. In one touching episode, the doctor loses his heart to a beautiful aristocrat who is kept in solitary confinement; they become prisoners together, talking about art and poetry and music, indifferent to the mad world they have left behind.
Political dissidents subjected to psychiatric abuse in the Soviet Union are part of the past that The Secret History touches on, suggesting that Nabokov may have spun one of his most fanciful novels from real-world reports of involuntary mental health treatment in Russia. But in his own life, fearful of causing harm to dissidents, Nabokov refrained from speaking out on behalf of these prisoners until well into his sixth decade in exile. He could still remember pogroms against Jews committed by the Romanovs, so even though he knew Stalin was a monster, it was just different.
Stalin’s Barber: A Book Review and Historical Comparison
Then, the idea for the Turkish haircut and barbering came from a friend who had recently returned from Istanbul. Having had such a haircut, he described it to me. The moment he did, I knew that I had solved a major problem: He left right before the Russian Revolution in He was a business man.
Eventually, he started a cosmetics company that went under during the Great Depression. Later, he found success with other businesses. My father was a very generous man. I suspect that the memory of his experiences in Russia framed that kindness towards other people. Can you describe the research you did to create the in-depth atmosphere of the story?
I actually spent seven years reading the fiction and non-fiction of the Soviet period, as well as numerous histories. Have you visited Russia or conducted any interviews there in preparation for your book?
Stalin’s Barber: A Book Review and Historical Comparison
Getting information is always a challenge. I asked Soviet scholars various questions, but I knew their information was limited as well.
- Stalin's Barber.
- Essentials.
- Reward Yourself;
- Stalin’s Barber: A Book Review and Historical Comparison – Philosophy of Shaving.
- Secondary Menu.
Did you learn more about your own family history in the process? Shortly before my father died, I conducted a series of interviews with him that I taped. I did the same with my mother who came from a Polish family, so I got a lot of information from that. My father was the youngest of eleven children. Just to explain how certain aspects of Jewish immigration worked.
My family benefited from the efforts of Baron Maurice de Hirsch who was a wealthy German-Jewish industrialist. He had made a fortune constructing railroads across Europe, then put a lot of those profits into assisting other European Jews, including financing their immigration to the Western Hemisphere. My older sister was a theatre studies major in college and I used to read her stuff.
I got my start writing plays.
What is Kobo Super Points?
I wanted to understand the Soviet period. What better way to understand it than through Stalin? The barber enabled me to put someone close to Stalin, who was notoriously paranoid.