Novel
The Time: Night
Время ночь
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya · 1992
Synopsis
Anna Andrianovna, an unsuccessful poetess, writes at night, on the corner of the table, the life of her family in a small Moscow flat where money is short. She speaks of her grandson Tima, whom she adores, of her daughter Alyona, mother of three children, of her son Andrei, out of prison, and of her own mother, Sima, who has been committed to an institution. The quarrels, shortages and humiliations of each day follow one another in a long monologue, in which the narrator's devotion to her family, full of contradictions, can be read.
Context
The novel appeared in the journal Novy mir, in the second issue of 1992, and was the same year a finalist for the Russian Booker. According to Polka, a German translation had preceded it in 1991 from Rowohlt, and had earned the author the prize of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation. Sally Laird's English translation appeared in 1994; in French, Anne Coldefy-Faucard translated it the same year for Robert Laffont, under the title La Nuit m'appartient.
Who it is for
A short but dense novel, made of a single monologue without chapters, to be read slowly, preferably in one sitting.
Prizes and reception
Shortlisted for the Russian Booker in 1992, it is counted among its author's best-known books.