Подросток Савенко

by Eduard Limonov

Edward Limonov's memoir of his youth growing up in Russia.

Genres: Russia, Biography, Nonfiction, Russian Literature, Research, Memoir, Ukraine

262 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Russian: Эдуард Лимонов

Russian novelist and dissident political thinker.

Limonov is the leader of the unregistered National Bolshevik Party (NBP). Limonov served two years in prison for illegaly purchasing weapons.

Limonov's works are noted for their cynicism. His novels are also memoirs, describing his experiences as a youth in Russia and as émigré in the United States

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are universities… And there is a street education… And the street education is always the cruelest and indelible…

Eddie-baby's fifteen. He's standing with a disdainful expression on his face, leaning back against the wall of a building containing a drugstore — leaning and waiting. Today is the Seventh of November, and filing past Eddie in the cool noonday is the dressed-up citizenry, or goat herd, as he calls them. Most of the goat herd are on their way back from the parade.

Memoir of a Russian Punk is an autobiographical novel and Eduard Limonov remembering his mutinous adolescence is truthful and uncompromising in depicting the wallowing on the bottom of the proletarian mire…

Both of them drunk, Vovka and Eddie-baby had actually thrown a cobblestone at the grocery store window. But the window didn't break, since they had thrown the cobblestone at its center and the large piece of glass had flexed and repelled the stone. It's embarrassing for Eddie-baby to remember just how much noise they made before finally managing to break the window.
Eddie-baby and Vovka had not even tried to look for money in the store after filling their knapsack with vodka. Without a thought they set off directly for Vovka's building (Eddie-baby completely forgot at the time all of Kostya's instructions for throwing the militia dogs off the scent, forgot, that is, all about water, tobacco, and naphthalene), hid the knapsack in the basement, and went up to Vovka's apartment with two of the bottles. Paying no attention whatever to the hysterical screaming of Vovka's mother, the two friends finished off one of the bottles and lay down on Vovka's bed. Vovka's only comment to his mother was, “Shut up, you old bitch, or Ed will fuck you!” and then he and Eddie-baby fell asleep embracing each other.

But Eddie-baby is crazy about poetry and in the end this mad passion helped him to find his road in life...
Art saves, not always and not everybody, but it saves.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eddie-baby is a fifteen year old growing up in the trash lots, muddy streets and dingy schools of Kharkov, USSR in the middle of the 1950's. This isn't really a book about the Soviet Union, though. It could have been written in Detroit or Paris or any other large city where teenagers are growing up. The police and the government, so prominent in other Soviet dissident fiction (Limonov was kicked out at about the same time as Solzhenitsyn, the early seventies) aren't a malicious, omniscient force but a bunch of stupid, cowardly thugs. Eddie-baby's district of Saltovka, which seems to resemble the housing projects of our own large inner-cities, is similarly not a place of oppression and fear. It's a playground for Eddie-baby and his gang of friends. They don't spend their days wallowing in depression and anxiety, they break into stores, down seas of vodka, beat up rival gangs, dance, and fuck. Eddie-baby's goal throughout the book isn't to avoid arrest, it's to get money so he can take his girl to a nice club.

This jarring approach to a time and place we are so used to associating with misery and paranoia is not the only surprise this book has in store. Limonov is a master of all forms of speech and the dialogues his characters have shine with a kind of effortless 'realness' that is always mesmerizing and often hilarious. Eddie-baby's conversation with his girlfriend at the end of the novel and the various drunk-intellectual chats Eddie has with Slavka the Gypsy are particularly excellent examples of Limonov's mastery of this style. His depictions of rape, murder, running from the 'trashes' (police) and fighting with kids from different neighborhoods receive the same kind of diligent, poetic honesty that is accorded to his struggles with girls and his overbearing, uncaring parents. His anger and his struggles with his own sexuality are treated with a disturbing and compelling level of childish frankness that far outstrips the self-pitying garbage most other memoir-writers stoop too, and the book overall benefits immensely from his willingness to unblinkingly confront even the most disgusting aspects of daily life.

The bottom line is that this is book is arrestingly original and beautifully written. If you're looking for a more human account of daily life in the Soviet Union or simply want to experience Limonov's genius as a writer this is the novel to read.

[Adam McPhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eddie-baby is a bookish adolescent on the path to becoming a punk, in spite of warnings from just about all of the adults in his life. The really crazy thing about this book is that it's just not the Soviet Union you've come to expect. There's a staggering difference between the Soviet police state we've long pictured in the West and the Trashes (Kharkov youth slang for militia) that Eddy and his gang live in defiance of.

I've known a bit about Limonov for years now - I've been a fan of the eXile for a long time, and that's how I found out about him - but this is the first of his books that I've read. I definitely should have read this sooner, and won't hesitate to read more. I think I let the charges of fascism bother me, plus his columns in the eXile were terrible (he refused to let anyone edit his poor english, which I mistakenly thought would be the case with his books) so I yawned or rolled my eyes whenever I read Mark Ames or John Dolan praise him. What a fool I'd been!

At any rate, Dolan writes a much better review here.

[Ligeia · Rating 4 out of 5]

a cinque anni dalla morte di Stalin, Eddy-baby vive a Char'kov in Russia...

e questo vuol dire che la sua adolescenza non è vissuta nel massimo dell'innocenza, nè le sue amiche sono diverse, lui è un giovane poeta, un teppistello di riporto ed è pure innamorato, ma Svetka non è la ragazzina carina e innocente che lui crede, e poi ci sono le altre bande e la muffa, come loro chiamno i poliziotti
infine c'è suo padre, che non fa carriera perchè è troppo debole, nonostante abbia una buona posizione nell'esercito, la sua famiglia ancora non ha una casa, hanno solo una stanza con bagno condiviso, Eddy dorme in veranda...una sera Eddy esce col gruppo sbagliato e vede quel che i suoi amici son soliti fare la notte, quando hanno bevuto, e da quel momento inconsapevolmente passa un segno e decide di andarsene

chissà come sarebbe finito se fosse rimasto, non lo sapremo mai, quel che sappiamo è che se n'è andato e ha vissuto una vita avventurosa, e nel frattempo ha anche trovato il modo di diventare uno scrittore famoso, i suoi amici sono finiti tutti male, lo scopriamo alla fine del libro, quando già è passato un quarto di secolo...

[Brendan Detzner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was my bible when I was fifteen. I was worried when I dug it out again that it wouldn't hold up, but if anything I think I enjoy it now more then I used to. If I could snap my fingers and bring one book back into print this would be the one. Especially moving in light of what eventually became of the author (poke around the internet if you want to know, but read the book first if at all possible).

[մառա · Rating 5 out of 5]

Эди-бэби думает, что ебал он их всех.

[IIIIIIKKKKKEEEEE · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nazbol gang

[Stela]

The title is way more promising than the book itself - or maybe I am not in the mood for this kind of reading which seems to me a Catcher in the Rye manqué.

[lysa · Rating 2 out of 5]

After following Eddie-baby over a 2 day period of a national holiday, we can surmise that he made a self realization at some point (when? after her raped his 14 year old girlfriend?) that he needs to skip town and renounce his punk friends if he wants to have a better life (despite the fact that throughout the entire book, he had aspired to be a punk and a criminal).

It's hard to believe he came to this realization when nothing in the narrative suggested otherwise. Maybe I wanted more violent depictions, more self revelations, more nicknames for Eddie-baby's friends (since it was hard to keep straight all of their similar if not same names), but for some reason this coming-of-age story never came to age.

[Billeen Carlson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this book as a teenager and am anxious to re-read and share with my own teenager as we start to study the Cold War in U.S. History this year.

As a Cold War Kid, I was sure that the Soviets, uniformly and monolithically, hated us and that we were all going to die in a nuclear holocaust. When the Berlin Wall came down and Glasnost began to occur, the nightmares stopped and I thought I might have a real chance at adulthood! Liminov's book reaffirmed this optimism as I read about Eddie Boy being a dumb, non-goosestepping teenager, just like me.

[John Christy · Rating 5 out of 5]

funny, brilliant, touching, and brutal. a vivid tour of a completely alien form of life

[Kobe Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cool coming of age story, really brings back tween memories

[Hex75 · Rating 3 out of 5]

prima o poi doveva succedere: anni dopo aver letto ed apprezzato "limonov" di carrere mi son deciso a leggere qualcosa di questo eduard limonov.
e cosa abbiamo qui? una storia di adolescenza borderline vissuta in strada, tra tentazioni delinquenziali e vaghe possibili vie di fuga: immagino che all'autore piacerebbe farci credere che sia una storia completamente autobiografica, il cui protagonista è intelligente ma anche "vero uomo", giovane eppure già passato attraverso quasi ogni esperienza, violento ma passionale, delinquente ma dotato di un suo codice d'onore, sempre in mezzo a crimini vari ma in qualche modo pulito...insomma, si sente la voglia che ha limonov di romanzarsi il proprio passato, ma quando un romanzo funziona ci si può passar sopra e godersi la storia. solo che non sempre il romanzo funziona, e ad un certo punto sembra aleggiare una certa ripetitività che finisce per annoiare.
a margine mi par di notare una certa nostalgia di limonov per quell'epoca, e non solo perchè furono gli anni della sua infanzia e prima adolescenza: chissà se è davvero così...

[Nadya De Angelis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Роман о взрослении советского подростка в 50-е. Впервые я его прочла лет тридцать назад, и тогда, на фоне лакированного соцреализма (см., например, предыдущую прочитанную мною книгу М. Коршунова) лимоновский текст казался острым, честным, пронзительным.

Сейчас, конечно, всё это воспринимается иначе: и советское, и антисоветское сливаются в белый шум, который скорее мешает, чем добавляет штрихов к портрету эпохи.

Но, в отличие от позднего Лимонова, это качественная литература, которую стоит читать и перечитывать.

[Mwenzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pros: writing style, distinctive characters, descriptive portrayal of reality in that place at that time.

Cons: there are only two interactions with a female character that don’t fall somewhere on the spectrum from harassment to gang rape. And given that this is a male coming of age story, there are a lot of interactions with female characters. And at no point do any characters express even the smallest inkling that maybe this is not okay. Disappointing and despicable.

[Chus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aunque me ha gustado ciertas partes de la historia y la radiografía de la sociedad y la juventud de E.Limonov, hay partes violentas -con respecto a las mujeres- edulcoradas de una manera extraña por no decir autocomplaciente, naturalizadora e idealizado monstruosamente.

[Emy · Rating 1 out of 5]

1/5 Stars ⭐️

[Patty 🐈‍⬛ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una stile di scrittura originale per raccontare un’adolescenza cruda e commovente.

[Vincent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un récit brut et provocateur de sa jeunesse délinquante à Kharkov, entre bagarres, vols et rébellion contre l'ordre soviétique. c'est violent, machiste, mais très attachant.

[Marta Bard · Rating 2 out of 5]

il primo libro russo che non mi piace😭💔

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

"A Catcher in the Rye" for Russia; the book tells the story of Eddie, a kid who has one eye on his career as a poet and one eye on his career as a thug. We follow Eddie as he interacts with his fellow ne'er do wells and the vagabond adults he hangs out with. The book does not tread new ground but is an intriguing read none the less.

[Charles Baudelaire · Rating 5 out of 5]

see; everyone likes it!

[Constantin Gavrilescu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muzici si faze cu 10 or mai multa violenta si golani

[bruna_d80 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Russia nuova, intrighi, malavita, ragazzi confusi da falsi miti:Limonov pesca a man bassa conservando un cuore volutamente pulito.