This is the first comprehensive study of Russian postmodernism in any language. Mark Lipovetsky takes the reader on a critical tour of twentieth-century Russian literature to develop a specific understanding of Russian postmodernism. In the process he takes on some of the central issues of the critical debate and draws on both Bakhtinian and chaos theory to develop a conception of postmodern poetics as a dialogue with chaos. Lipovetsky concludes by placing Russian literature in the context of this enriched postmodernism. An appendix with extensive bibliographical notes on contemporary Russian writers and literary theorists complements the study.

Editor's Introduction: Postmodernism, Duty-Free Eliot Borenstein I. Introduction 1. Chaos as a System Dialogue with Chaos as a New Artistic Strategy II. Culture as Chaos 2. Sacking the Museum: Andrei Bitov's Pushkin House 3. From an Otherwordly Point of View: Venedikt Erofeev' s Moscow to the End of the Line 4. The Myth of Metamorphosis: Sasha Sokolov's A School for Fools 5. Active Nonbeing III. The Poetics of Chaosmos 6. Context: Soviet Utopia 7. Context: Mythologies of Creation 8. Context: Mythologies of History 9. Context: Mythologies of the Absurd 10. Famous Last Words IV. Conclusion 11. On the Nature of Russian Postmodernism

Mark Lipovetsky, Eliot Borenstein