Han Ong Reads Lyudmila Ulitskaya
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What story does Han Ong choose to read and discuss?
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This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from The New Yorker magazine. I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker. Each month, we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss. This month, we're going to hear The Fugitive by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, which was translated from the Russian by Bela Ishaevich and appeared in The New Yorker in May of 2014.
A month and a half had gone by, and he still had no news from home. He did not seek out ways to get in touch with his wife. He was more comfortable not imagining how worried she was about him, her desires, anxieties, and fears.
The story was chosen by Han Ong, who is the author of numerous plays and the novels Fixer Chow and The Disinherited. Hi, Han.
Hey, Debra.
So I think you somewhat surprised yourself by choosing to read a story by Lyudmila Uletskaya today. Why was that?
Well, I was trawling through the fiction archives looking for a story to read for the podcast. And I sort of set myself a parameter of going back 15 years through the fiction archives and then scrolling through to the present day. And I'd happen upon this story, which I remember really loving when I first read it. And that was pretty quick into my search. And so that was that. The decision was made. I've been so floored by the story when I first read it. And I don't remember when I'd read it, if I'd read it when it was first published or much later. I chose it also in conjunction with the wonderful profile that M. Gessen had published in the magazine of Ulitskaya. But here the chronology gets a little hazy for me.
I don't know whether I'd first read The Guessing Profile and then found the story or had already read the story because this story was in fact published in the magazine before The Guessing Profile. And then, you know, reading The Guessing Profile after reading the story sort of helped bolster my love for this particular writer and this particular short story.
What is it that is at the heart of your love for her?
Well, two things. I love her as a writer and I love her as a person of conscience in her native Russia. So I'm full of admiration. I'm always looking for how should an artist be in this day and age of incipient fascism and all of that. So I'm always looking for role models, if you will, or who to model myself after in terms of trying to be – An artist living in a crueler and crueler society and how to overcome the usual artist feelings of inutility and impotence.
Yeah. I mean, Lutz Geyer had started off as a geneticist and then lost that job due to an act of so-called sedition.
Yes, the lab was shut down. I think it was because they'd entrusted a typist, an office typist with Samistat, to put down on record, and then the typist had turned them in. And so in the profile, it says that Ulitskaya and her colleagues had got off relatively easy. They were detained for 24 hours, and then they were released, but they lost their job as a consequence of having been turned in.
Right. She was translating an unpublishable novel and didn't want to type it all herself. Right. Right. This particular story does focus around a dissident artist. When you first read it, what was your immediate reaction to it?
There were a couple of things that stood out to me. First of all, I think I am, as a reader, partial to the kind of skullduggery that is involved in trying to skirt the impositions of a cruel regime, you know, which can also be a kind of parental despotism. So the spy story elements in it are very thrilling for me. So that's one. And then the other one, which we can talk about at length later on, is there is a description of bunch of old women taking a bath.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What story does Han Ong choose to read and discuss?
0:01–7:27
2
Why did Han Ong choose 'The Fugitive' by Lyudmila Ulitskaya?
7:27–13:56
3
What themes are explored in 'The Fugitive'?
13:56–24:57
4
How does the story reflect the experience of dissidents in Russia?
24:57–35:46
5
What is the significance of the character Boris Ivanovich's journey?
35:46–43:41
6
How do the old women in the village symbolize resilience?
43:41–52:11
7
What role does art play in Boris Ivanovich's life?
52:11–1:01:24
8
How does the ending of 'The Fugitive' reflect Ulitskaya's perspective on life?
1:01:24–1:24:16