afisha.ru: What will your next book be about?

Z.P.: About the love of a black monkey. It’s called The Black Monkey. It’s about love and blood, you see.

afisha.ru: What will your next book be about?

Mikhail Gigolashvili: About that which was, which might have been, and that which could never have been, but was…

Leonid Yuzefovich, Big Book Prize winner, author of Cranes and Dwarfs and Kazaroza, and pioneer of the retro-detective genre, answers Afisha's questions

December 2nd saw the launch of Ludmila Ulitskaya’s new book Imago (published as The Green Pavilion in Russia). On the eve of its release we talked to the author about dissidents, St. Paul and the disappearance of mankind.

'My most honourable honorarium was a regular double portion of food in the Soviet Army, where I served for two years like most Soviet students. That was my pay for the rhymed letters which I had been writing for our regiment's cook who was in love with a romantic schoolgirl.'

'The composition can be very complex. It’s like acrobatics. The text has to be laid down for the order to evaluate the structure correctly. For example, it was only after almost a year that I realised some lines from the first and second part of Matisse needed to be swapped around.'

'I was totally apolitical until 1985, that is, when I was in college. I could not understand a subject like history, because it was something too far away. We lived outside of history. A man who lives outside of history cannot be a citizen. I was interested in literature, art, life – everything, just not social problems.'

'For me, working on a novel is not different from working on a short story. It’s work. Sometimes it’s very hard. At other times, it’s enthralling. The care and constant attention to the language that one must exercise remind me of a young mother’s experience with her growing belly.'

'...the most compelling Western philosophers in my life were Remy Martin and Jack Daniels. They compelled me to do many things I otherwise would never think of. If seriously, I don’t take professional philosophers seriously even when I understand what they say.'

'My themes are connected with the inner world of man, how he finds his place in the world. Every person is alone, has his sickness. But my stories take place in Israel. More and more it feeds my imagination. I see myself looking at things through the eyes of an Israeli.'