Freedom from Violence and Lies is a collection of forty-one essays by
Simon Karlinsky (1924-2009), a prolific and controversial scholar of
modern Russian literature, sexual politics, and music who taught in the
University of California, Berkeley's Department of Slavic Languages and
Literatures from 1964 to 1991. Among Karlinsky's full-length works are
major studies of Marina Tsvetaeva and Nikolai Gogol, Russian Drama from
Its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin; editions of Anton Chekhov's
letters; writings by Russian émigrés; and correspondence between
Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson. Karlinsky also wrote frequently for
professional journals and mainstream publications like the New York
Times Book Review and the Nation. The present volume is the first
collection of such shorter writings, spanning more than three decades.
It includes twenty-seven essays on literary topics and fourteen on
music, seven of which have been newly translated from the Russian
originals.