{"product_id":"9781429998833","title":"Metro Stop Dostoevsky: Travels in Russian Time","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA Russian American writer catapults herself into the maelstrom of Russian life at a time of seismic change for both\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe  daughter of Russian émigrés, Ingrid Bengis grew up wondering whether  she was American or, deep down, \"really Russian.\" In 1991, naïvely in  love with Russia and Russian literature, she settled in St. Petersburg,  where she was quickly immersed in \"catastroika,\" a period of immense  turmoil that mirrored her own increasingly complex and contradictory  experience. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBengis's account of her involvement with Russia is  heightened by her involvement with B, a Russian whose collapsing  marriage, paralleling the collapse of the Soviet Union, produces a  situation in which \"anything could happen.\" Their relationship reflects  the social tumult, as well as the sometimes dangerous consequences of  American \"good intentions.\" As Bengis takes part in Russian  life-becoming a reluctant entrepreneur, undergoing surgery in a St.  Petersburg hospital, descending into a coal mine-she becomes  increasingly aware of its Dostoevskian duality, never more so than when  she meets the impoverished, importuning great-great-granddaughter of the  writer himself. Beneath the seismic shifting remains a centuries-old  preoccuption with \"the big questions\": tradition and progress, destiny  and activism, skepticism and faith. With its elaborate pattern of  digression and its eye for the revealing detail, Bengis's account has  the hypnotic intimacy of a late-night conversation in a Russian kitchen,  where such questions are perpetually being asked.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Farrar, Straus and Giroux","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47170918646000,"sku":"9781429998833","price":7.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781429998833_p0.jpg?v=1769904072","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781429998833","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}