For more than seven decades the circuses enjoyed tremendous popularity in the Soviet Union. How did the circus—an institution that dethroned figures of authority and refused any orderly narrative structure—become such a cultural mainstay in a state known for blunt and didactic messages? Miriam Neirick argues that the variety, flexibility, and indeterminacy of the modern circus accounted for its appeal not only to diverse viewers but also to the Soviet state. In a society where government-legitimating myths underwent periodic revision, the circus proved a supple medium of communication. Between 1919 and 1991, it variously displayed the triumph of the Bolshevik revolution, the beauty of the new Soviet man and woman, the vulnerability of the enemy during World War II, the prosperity of the postwar Soviet household, and the Soviet mission of international peace—all while entertaining the public with the acrobats, elephants, and clowns. With its unique ability to meet and reconcile the demands of both state and society, the Soviet circus became the unlikely darling of Soviet culture and an entertainment whose usefulness and popularity stemmed from its ambiguity.

Fiction. Latino/Latina Studies. Virgil Suárez's latest short story collection, his first in more than two decades, is subversive and emotionally piercing. A man whose yard is plagued by armadillos, a pair of boys who torment scorpions with gasoline fires, and a father's best friend wasting away with an illness as a son watches the deterioration with fascination and disgust. These are just a few of the characters from seventeen stories that reveal a dark, satiric view of the human condition that's somehow ferocious and, at times, funny. Shades of Denis Johnson and George Saunders run throughout this potent volume of new stories. Whether he's writing about Havana, Miami, or other less exotic locales, Suárez has the ironic distance of an outsider while capturing the details only insiders know. THE SOVIET CIRCUS COMES TO HAVANA AND OTHER STORIES is an apt addition to the world of short fiction. In THE SOVIET CIRCUS COMES TO HAVANA, Virgil Suárez paints a vivid picture of the beauty and terror of revolutionary Cuba and exile from that 'solitary island floating away into a blue expanse.' These elegantly crafted coming-of-age stories richly illustrate that the first losses of life are among the hardest to bear.--Rita Ciresi This wonder-filled collection of stories shows Virgil Suárez joining the ranks of multi-talented writers like Oates and Updike who can produce top work in novels, poems, and short fiction. THE SOVIET CIRCUS stories continually surprise, whether they stem from his boyhood in Cuba or roll knowingly through America, from the West coast to Florida, filled with the tragedies and comedies of unforgettable characters.--Peter Meinke

Separated from his family on a visit to the Soviet Union and taken to jail for minor violations, Psalty finds comfort in a remembered Bible verse.

Collects four stories, including "The Circus," in which rhyming text describes different circus performances.

Offering a general overview of the evolution of Soviet film satire during a seventy-year period, this volume also provides in-depth analyses of such classics as Kuleshov's The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks; Volga, Volga, a popular musical of the Stalinist period; and the bitter and surrealistic Zero City, The Fountain, and Black Rose, Red Rose of the glasnost period. It also examines the effects of communism's collapse in 1991 on the tradition of satire and includes an interview with the renowned Soviet filmmaker Yuri Mamin.

A masterpiece from one of Yiddish literature's true virtuosi, Moyshe Kulbak's Childe Harold of Dysna appears here for the first time in a complete English translation. At once an exuberant celebration of Yiddish language and a searing indictment of capitalist excess, Kulbak's long poem follows the journey of its protagonist from small town Eastern Europe to the metropolis of Weimar Berlin. We watch as his literary aspirations and intellectual illusions are dashed on the rocks of a culture corroding from within. Drawing on his own beleaguered experiences in Berlin in the early 1920s, not only does Kulbak offer us a fresh perspective on urban life in interwar Berlin but he also does so in one of the truly great pyrotechnic displays in Yiddish poetry. Robert Adler Peckerar's stunning translation has managed the great feat of conveying simultaneously Kulbak's verbal brilliance and his searing critique.

A century ago, daily life ground to a halt when the circus rolled into town. Across America, banks closed, schools canceled classes, farmers left their fields, and factories shut down so that everyone could go to the show. In this entertaining and provocative book, Janet Davis links the flowering of the early-twentieth-century American railroad circus to such broader historical developments as the rise of big business, the breakdown of separate spheres for men and women, and the genesis of the United States' overseas empire. In the process, she casts the circus as a powerful force in consolidating the nation's identity as a modern industrial society and world power. Davis explores the multiple "shows" that took place under the big top, from scripted performances to exhibitions of laborers assembling and tearing down tents to impromptu spectacles of audiences brawling, acrobats falling, and animals rampaging. Turning Victorian notions of gender, race, and nationhood topsy-turvy, the circus brought its vision of a rapidly changing world to spectators--rural as well as urban--across the nation. Even today, Davis contends, the influence of the circus continues to resonate in popular representations of gender, race, and the wider world.