Han Ong

But it's so telling, again, with this sort of double vision that Uluskaya has, that this occasion for much joy and the reawakening of his...

artist's self will also be the occasion for his eventual downfall when he is pegged for pornography by the state for these very images, which are exhibited in Cologne.

Well, at the simplest level, he lives, he gets to live.

So in that way, it's a victory.

But that kind of outcome is very typical in Russian history and also very typical in Uluskaya's stories, being reflective of Russian history, in that you take small victories where you can.

And also, I think the dissident spirit, although there are, in fact, people who persist to their 90s and remain dissident,

dissident in spirit and in act you know that kind of fierce dissident spirit burns really bright between I don't know what you know you can sort of bracket it between this age and that age and after a while it sort of burns out and you sort of have to settle for the compromise of living and also artists are you know part of being an artist is to sort of indulge a kind of sybaritic spirit a kind of spirit of survivalism so being an artist slash dissident is always a kind of tricky proposition

You know, the principled side of you versus the sensuous side or the side that wants good living, you know, or settled living.

And this is also part of the way Old Sky's stories turn out is that her characters' fates are dispatched in a paragraph in English.

Having spent, you know, pages and pages with them, suddenly the quirks of their fates are dispatched in a sentence or two.

And that's just sort of the part of the vagaries of life.

You know, history happens.

It boils you up.

It plummets you down.

You just have to sort of endure all of the vicissitudes of this world.

You know, the upping and the downing and come out the other side.

And you have to live long to see at least some up in that cycle.

You know, and I think for now, this is an up.

Who knows if he might continue to be from his émigré perch, a continuing gadfly of the government, as some people do.

Or it could mean...