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    Compartment No. 6: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Compartment No. 6: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Compartment No. 6: A Novel
    Ebook189 pages3 hours

    Compartment No. 6: A Novel

    By Rosa Liksom

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    In the waning years of the Soviet Union, a sad young Finnish woman boards a train in Moscow. Bound for Mongolia, she's trying to put as much space as possible between her and a broken relationship. Wanting to be alone, she chooses an empty compartment--No. 6.--but her solitude is soon shattered by the arrival of a fellow passenger: Vadim Nikolayevich Ivanov, a grizzled, opinionated, foul-mouthed former soldier. Vadim fills the compartment with his long and colorful stories, recounting in lurid detail his sexual conquests and violent fights.

    There is a hint of menace in the air, but initially the woman is not so much scared of or shocked by him as she is repulsed. She stands up to him, throwing a boot at his head. But though Vadim may be crude, he isn't cruel, and he shares with her the sausage and black bread and tea he's brought for the journey, coaxing the girl out of her silent gloom. As their train cuts slowly across thousands of miles of a wintry Russia, where "everything is in motion, snow, water, air, trees, clouds, wind, cities, villages, people and thoughts," a grudging kind of companionship grows between the two inhabitants of compartment No. 6. When they finally arrive in Ulan Bator, a series of starlit and sinister encounters bring Rosa Liksom's incantatory Compartment No. 6 to its powerful conclusion.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateAug 2, 2016
    ISBN9781555979430
    Unavailable
    Compartment No. 6: A Novel
    Author

    Rosa Liksom

    Rosa Liksom was born 1958 in Lapland, Finland to a family of farmers and reindeer breeders. A renowned painter, cartoonist, children's writer and filmmaker, she is best known as a prize-winning writer whose books have been translated into more than 15 languages. After living in Kristiania, Copenhagen, where she wrote her first novel, as well as Norway, Iceland, Paris, Brezhnev-era Moscow and in squats and communes throughout Europe, she returned to Helsinki, Finland, in 1987. She won the 2011 Finlandia Prize for Compartment No. 6.

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    3.5/5

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    • 5/5
      A fascinating story about a girl student travelling through the whole Russia that was formerly known as Soviet Union. The train journey happened during the Soviet era. Rosa Liksom achieves a perfect vision of what was going on at that time in Finlands big eastern neighbour country by using accurate details in her descriptive style of writing. This serves well to show the futile and neglected that was characteristic of living in the Soviet Union during the communist regime. The talkative Russian male travelling companion in the same cabin on the train makes an interesting contrast compared with a very silent Finnish girl who mostly listens what her companion has on his mind.I think this is the best book by its author, painter, playwright and novelist who has written several short story collections as well, and one of the best books in the history of literature.