Anna Dvorzhetskaya

Based on the novel by Booker Prize Winner Ludmila Ulitskaya, The Funeral Party is set in August 1991. In a sweltering New York City apartment, a group of Russian émigrés gathers round the deathbed of an artist named Alik, a charismatic character beloved by them all, especially the women who take turns nursing him as he fades from this world. Their reminiscences of the dying man and of their lives in Russia are punctuated by debates and squabbles: Whom did Alik love most? Should he be baptized before he dies, as his alcoholic wife, Nina, desperately wishes, or be reconciled to the faith of his birth by a rabbi who happens to be on hand? And what will be the meaning for them of the Yeltsin putsch, which is happening across the world in their long-lost Moscow but also right before their eyes on CNN?

In the fall of 2014, a young Russian journalist Alexei Suvorov, who dreams of money and fame, travels to Donbass as part of a humanitarian mission to interview the famous battalion commander Lesentsov, who is fighting on the side of the militia. He intends to sell the collected material to a German publication, with which he cooperates in parallel and where he plans to get a permanent job. During the journey, Suvorov encounters numerous obstacles that always distance him from his intended goal. As a result, he is forced to act rashly, risk his life and make mistakes. His fellow travelers are people with different destinies and attitudes to what is happening.

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