Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture

"This collection is an important contribution to our understanding of the ways in which the shifting discourse of madness offers a rich and varied lens through which to explore Russia's troubled experience of modernity." D. Beer, Slavonic and East European Review/vvol88:03:10

‘A series of fascinating essays that approach the problem of insanity in Russian culture from wide-ranging disciplinary angles.’ Valeria Sobol, The Russian Review

‘The most comprehensive interdisciplinary survey of its kind.’ Dmitri Shalin, Russian Journal of Communication

‘A cornucopia of delights for specialists and generalists alike.’ Scarlet Marquette, Slavic and East European Journal

‘The volume is a broad mosaic ... exciting and kaleidoscopic.’ Elena L. Grigorenko, PsycCRITIQUES

‘This collection of essays is both an excellent introduction to madness and an opportunity to probe this fascinating terrain in depth.’

Nigel Raab, Left History vol 20:01:2016

‘“Madness (bezumie) is a language,” Mikhail Epstein writes in his contribution to this wonderfully eclectic and wide-ranging volume. In the Russian literary tradition, that language has enjoyed high status: it was spoken by holy fools, saintly idiots, honest citizens incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals, great poets in their capacity as prophets. In the post-Soviet period, this spectrum broadened to include de-ideologized studies of neurosis, depression, suicide, fan hysteria, shell shock, revolutionary trauma — all of which are discussed here by Russians from inside their own culture as well as by outsiders and bi-culturals. A fascinating book on that most difficult task: making cultural sense out of worlds and psyches designed to work on the far side of reason.’ Caryl Emerson, A. Watson Armour III University Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University