Umrao Jan Ada: Courtesan Of Lucknow

During the last few years many people of great talent have been allowed to emigrate from the Soviet Union.As many of Russia’s best living writers are now living outside their own country, it was recently decided to launch a quarterly journal to which they would all contribute. This journal, KONTINENT, would open a dialogue between these writers and the literary figures in the West interested in the problems of Eastern Europe.This collection is drawn from the first two Russian volumes of KONTINENT, and includes valuable contributions from the most famous ‘stars’ of Russia’s ‘third emigration’. There is the historic controversy between Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize; a memorable article by Abram Terz (Andrei Sinyavsky) on the literary process in Russia; a novella by Vladimir Maramzin; and poems by Joseph Brodsky, widely accepted as Russia’s most talented living poet, and by Alexander Galich, whose work is enjoyed in song form by millions of Russians.

This groundbreaking volume may well be the poetry anthology for the global village. As selected by J.D. McClatchy, this collection includes masterpieces from four continents and more than two dozen languages in translations by such distinguished poets as Elizabeth Bishop, W.S. Merwin, Ted Hughes, and Seamus Heaney. Among the countries and writers represented are: Bangladesh–Taslima Nasrin Chile–Pablo Neruda China–Bei Dao, Shu Ting El Salvador–Claribel Alegria France–Yves Bonnefoy Greece–Odysseus Elytis, Yannis Ritsos India–A.K. Ramanujan Israel–Yehuda Amichai Japan–Shuntaro Tanikawa Mexico–Octavio Paz Nicaragua–Ernesto Cardenal Nigeria–Wole Soyinka Norway–Tomas Transtromer Palestine–Mahmoud Darwish Poland–Zbigniew Herbert, Czeslaw Milosz Russia–Joseph Brodsky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko Senegal–Leopold Sedar Senghor South Africa–Breyten Breytenbach St. Lucia, West Indies–Derek Walcott