Marina Warner

Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary.; Robert Chandler discusses The Portable Platonov.

Marina Warner, the prominent writer, critic, historian and broadcaster, will address the wide variation in translated versions of Russian texts. Her conversation with Robert Chandler will focus on Andrey Platonov in particular. Chandler has translated and co-translated several of Platonov's novels, including, with Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson, a new edition of the absurdist parable The Foundation Pit, Platonov's most overtly political book, written in direct response to the brutalities of Stalin's collectivisation of Russian agriculture. It is a literary masterpiece which deforms and transforms language in seeking to evoke unspeakable realities. This English translation is the first and only one to be based on the definitive edition published by Pushkin House in Moscow. All tickets £8 per event, available online or by calling +44 (0)20 7209 1141. Concessions: £5, for LRB subscribers, Friends of the British Museum, students and OAPs (concessions available from the Bookshop or by phone only). Supported by: * The British Museum * Arts Council England * The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (FlossieT)… (more)

Mary Beard, The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found.; Marina Warner

From Hollywood reinventions to comic strips, myth and classical history remain powerful triggers for our 21st-century imagination. So what draws us to ancient archetypes, folklore and lost empires? Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge is the author of some of the most scholarly yet accessible accounts of ancient Rome in print, most recently her trailblazing Pompeii. Novelist, lecturer and cultural historian Marina Warner has been examining the feminine in myth and history since she first emerged as a leading feminist thinker in the 1970s. Together they cut through the cultural appropriations that often skew our vision of the ancient world and its mythologies. (DeadGoodBooks)… (more)