The Kukotsky Enigma: A Novel

Ludmila Ulitskaya

aug 2016 · Northwestern University Press

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Translated from the Russian by Diane Nemec Ignashev

The central character in Ludmila Ulitskaya’s celebrated novel The Kukotsky Enigma is a gynecologist contending with Stalin’s prohibition of abortions in 1936. But, in the tradition of Russia’s great family novels, the story encompasses the history of two families and unfolds in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the ruins of ancient civilizations on the Black Sea. Their lives raise profound questions about family heritage and genetics, nurture and nature, and life and death. In his struggle to maintain his professional integrity and to keep his work from dividing his family, Kukotsky confronts the moral complexity of reproductive science. Winner of the 2001 Russian Booker Prize and the basis for a blockbuster television miniseries, The Kukotsky Enigma is an engrossing, searching novel by one of contemporary literature’s most brilliant writers.

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LUDMILA ULITSKAYA is one of Russia’s most acclaimed and best-selling writers as well as a prominent political activist. A scientist before she began her literary career, she is the author of thirteen works of fiction, three books for children, and six plays. Her awards include the Russian Booker Prize and the Big Book Prize, the latter the most prestigious in Russia.

DIANE NEMEC IGNASHEV is Class of 1941 Professor of Russian and the Liberal Arts at Carleton College in Minnesota and the translator of No Love without Poetry: The Memoirs of Marina Tsvetaeva’s Daughter by Ariadna Efron (Northwestern, 2009) and Paranoia by Victor Martinovich (Northwestern, 2013).