Ledově modrá krev – Bujda Jurij (2021)

Yuriy Buidya is one of the most prominent contemporary Russian writers. For the first time, he presents himself to Czech readers with the prose Ice Blue Blood (2011), which follows the fates of the inhabitants of a small provincial town, Chudov, from revolutionary times to the 1990s. From a magical mosaic of comedic and cruel episodes emerges the story of actress Ida Zmojro, loosely based on the incredible fate of the famous Soviet film star Valentina Karavaeva. Her fictional counterpart, like her, becomes famous during the war for her role as the naive Mashenka in the film of the same name, winning the hearts of soldiers at the front and even Stalin himself. However, a tragic car accident disfigures her face, and she later falls out of favor and must return to her hometown, where time has stopped. Nevertheless, she does not cease to long for the stage, and so in solitude, she creates dozens of records of her beloved roles... Buidya masterfully captures the gray and cruel reality of the Stalinist and Soviet era and transforms it into a colorful carnival of images and characters; he creates a unique fictional world where the boundaries between life and theater blur. In his prose, he combines the best tradition of the great novel with Gogolian exaggeration and Bulgakovian magic.