Love Of Worker Bees And A Great Love

Description

Love of Worker Bees, written by one of the most famous and gifted Russian women of our century, was greeted on publication in 1923 as sexually too explicit. The book collects three works of fiction, 'Vasilisa Malygina', 'Three Generations' and 'Sisters', and offers a graphic and rare portrayal of Russian life in the 1920s. the three stories unfold against a backcloth of the 'ordinary' Russian people of the time - the Party workers, entrepreneurs, prostitutes, manipulators, idealists. A Great Love is remarkable for its frank exploration of sexual feeling. These moving love stories depict loneliness, vulnerability, the power of the sexual appetite to distort judgement - the tragic element in love itself. In A Great Love, we follow the course of Natasha's love affair with the married Senya, and her disillusioning search for friendship and equality as well as passion for the man she loves. The story is now known to be based on Lenin's love affair with the beautiful and talented Inessa Armand.

Alexandra Kollontai was born in 1872 into an aristocratic liberal family. She married at the age of twenty and had one son. Early in her life she became involved in radical circles, and the conflicts this created caused her to leave her beloved son and husband for a life of independent political action.

Great advocates for female independence, and resonate today as much today as they did 70 years ago * DAILY TELEGRAPH * A Great Love is a really outstanding literary achievement, subtle, moving and universal * New Society * An eloquent mixture of public and private themes, heart-searching and didacticism, love and work * Observer *