Liudmila Ulitskaia's Literature of Tolerance

Sutcliffe examines Liudmila Ulitskaia's literature of tolerance. He tells that when Ulitskaia published a novella, The Funeral Party in 1997, it received the critical scrutiny warranted by the latest work of an already prominent figure in post-Soviet letters. Her assessment is more than a commonplace designed to snare sensitive readers--it is a key to her prose and plays, shaping The Funeral Party and culminating in Daniel Stein, Interpreter (2006), a structurally heterogeneous novel about healing the rift between Jews and gentiles. These two works powerfully depict the results of misunderstanding and, more significantly in the context of Russian culture, stress the need for reconciliation. Both narratives foreground Ulitskaia's longstanding fascination with hybrid characters: those individuals who combine different (and usually divisive) ethnicities and belief systems.