Novel with cocaine
Novel with cocaine (Russian: Роман с кокаином , Roman s kokainom ) is a novel in Russian that was published in Paris in 1936 under the pseudonym M. Agejew (М. Агеев). Mark Lasarewitsch Levi (Марк Ла́заревич Ле́ви) is considered the author today.
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The novel is a “boarding school, puberty and initiation story typical of the time” by the young first-person narrator Vadim Maslennikow. During the Russian Revolution in Moscow, he and his boarding school mates went through various sex, cheating and drug escapades before falling into cocaine addiction , from which he ultimately died. Maslennikov appears in his own narrative as an inhuman failure, upstart and adjustor who ruthlessly ruins both those close to him and then himself.
The original title is ambiguous: Роман means both “love” and “novel” in Russian.
Publication history and reception
The manuscript came from Istanbul in 1933 to the editorial staff of the Russian exile magazine "Tchisla" in Paris and was printed in 1934. In 1936 a book was published in Paris. A French translation, published in 1983, was highly praised by literary critics. Further translations into more than a dozen languages followed. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung described the novel in 2012 as “one of the outstanding masterpieces of modern Russian literature”.
The novel has been translated into German twice:
- 1986 by Daniel Dubbe from the French translation ( Rowohlt Verlag , ISBN 978-3-4980-0020-2 )
- 2012 by Valerie Engler and Norma Cassau from the Russian original ( Manesse Verlag , ISBN 978-3-7175-2286-7 )
author
In the 1980s, the identity of “M. Ageev ”speculated heavily. The success of the novel was fueled by the widespread assumption that Vladimir Nabokov was hiding behind the pseudonym . It has been known since the 1990s that the manuscript of the novel was written by the Russian Mark Levi, who was then living in Istanbul . Levi's biography became known in 1994 thanks to research by two Moscow archivists, who found a résumé written by him in 1941, in which he identified himself as the author of the novel.
filming
The novel was first filmed in a Russian production by Alti Films (Алти фильмс) in 2012. The plot was moved to the present.
Gennadij Aleksandrovitsch Sidorow (Геннадий Александрович Сидоров) wrote the script and directed it. The director died while working on the sound for the film. The main role of the protagonist Vadim Maslennikow is played by Igor Trif (Игорь Триф). The film premiere took place in Sochi on June 2, 2013. A nationwide demonstration followed on January 16, 2014.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Original work in Russian with cross-references to its origin and genesis: online
- ^ A b c d Felix Philipp Ingold: An enigmatic masterpiece: Who wrote the breathtaking «Novel with Cocaine»? , NZZ of September 24, 2012
- ↑ Crime with Koks , in: Der Spiegel , May 12, 1986
- ↑ M. Sorokina / G. Superfin, "Byl takoj pisatel 'Ageev ..." Versija sud'by ili o pol'ze naivnogo biografizma ( "There was the writer Agejew ..." The version of a fate or about the usefulness of naive biographism. ), In: Minuvšee. Istoričeskij al'manach [Moscow / St.Petersburg], 16 (1994), pp. 265-288.