Nina Nikolayevna Sadur | |
|---|---|
| Born | Nina Nikolayevna Kolesnikova (1950-10-15)15 October 1950 Novosibirsk,Russian SFSR,USSR |
| Died | 12 November 2023(2023-11-12) (aged 73) Moscow, Russia |
| Occupation | Prose writer and playwright |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Literary movement | Magic realism Postmodernism Theatre of the Absurd |
| Children | Yekaterina Sadur |
Nina Nikolayevna Sadur (Russian:Нина Николаевна Садур, (bornNina Nikolayevna Kolesnikova; 15 October 1950 – 12 November 2023), also known asNína Mikháilovna Sadúr,[1] was a Russian prose writer and playwright. She was known for being "one of the leading proponents of the 'new drama' of the 1980s, whose avant-garde vision is dark, mystic, and absurdist."[1]
Nina Nikolayevna Sadur was born on 15 October 1950, inNovosibirsk, Russia.[1] She grew up in an intellectual family in a working-class neighborhood of Novosibirsk and experienced a "sense of alienation and fascination for the common folk, the 'other'."[1] Her mother taughtRussian literature and was an actress in amateur plays while her father was a poet.[1] Sadur began writingpoetry andprose at a young age.[1] As a child, Sadur had an interest in literature and nature.[1] She wanted to become anentomologist but decided to pursue literature instead when she decided that dissecting insects went against her love of the natural world.[1]
Sadur attended the Sixth All-Union Conference for Young Dramatists at the House of Writers in Dubolty,Latvia and studied at the Faculty of Library Science of theMoscow Institute of Culture.[1] She studied under Russian dramatistViktor Rozov and criticInna Vishnevskaia at theMaxim Gorky Literature Institute inMoscow,[2] graduating in 1983.[1]
Sadur wrote short stories and plays while working as a cleaner at thePushkin Theatre[2] to support herself.[1] In 1982, she wroteThe Wondrous Wrench, which was performed at theLenkom and Ermolova as well as by theMoscow University student theatre.[2] The play told the story of a game of tag played in a potato field which "may spell the end of the world" and was recognized as a "turning point in modern Russian drama."[2] In 1982, she also wroteThe Incriminated Swallow.[2] The following year, she wroteGo On!,The Power of the Voice andDawn Will Come Up.[2] Some of her other works have includedThey Froze (1987), The Devil in Love, By Magic, Pannochka, A Nose, Brother Chichikov, andRed Paradise (1988).[2]Red Paradise was a "brutally absurdist" play in which "Soviet tourists to a Crimean fortress, attempting to plunder the treasures of ancient civilizations, meet repeated violent ends."[1] In 1977, she published a semi-autobiographical longer prose work calledThis Is My Window.[1] In 1989, Sadur joined the Writer's Union.[1][3]
Sadur described her style as being the "realm of the illusory" or "magical realism."[2] Her influences includeGabriel Garcia Márquez,Ray Bradbury, andClifford Simak.[1]
In 1994, Melissa T. Smith described Sadur's work: "Her prose works, in which narrative perspective is subject to abrupt shifts between internal and external, first and third persons, present a dark vision of contemporary reality. The everyday world,byt, is not the ground of existence, but a thin veil behind which the reader quickly discovers a lurking 'other' – the struggle of good and evil, black magic andOrthodox Christianity."[1]
In 1999, Christine D. Tomei described a hallmark of Sadur's work as being "a strong interest in the everyday details of Soviet life."[4]
In 2014, Sadur publishedThe Witching Hour and Other Plays.[5]Middlebury professor Thomas R. Beyer characterized the work as "[leading] us into the darkness of the human spirit as the Russian literature of Gogol and Dostoevsky has so often done."[5]The Times Literary Supplement wrote about the book, "Sadur's plays are discomforting; they uproot certainties, allowing deep and ugly forces to disrupt the strained surface of Soviet life."[5]
Sadur had a daughter, Yekaterina Sadur,[6] who is also known as Katia.[1] Yekaterina has published books as well as written for film and theatre.[6]
According to a source published in 1994, Sadur was living in a communal apartment in Moscow with her mother and daughter.[1]
Nina Sadur died in Moscow on 12 November 2023, at the age of 73.[7]
