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Polly Gannon

Biography

Polly Gannon

Polly Gannon is the director of cultural studies at the New York-St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistics, Cognition and Culture. She holds a Ph.D. in Russian Literature from Cornell University, and has translated Russian to English novels such as JACOB'S LADDER by Ludmila Ulitskaya, THE SYMMETRY TEACHER by Andrei Bitov and WORD FOR WORD by Lilianna Lungina. She lives, teaches and translates while pursuing a tactile and poetic engagement with the Semiotics of Textiles.

Polly Gannon

Books by Polly Gannon

Eisen
written by Guzel Yakhina, translated by Polly Gannon - Fiction, Historical Fiction

In EISEN, Guzel Yakhina turns her formidable historical imagination to the life of Sergei Eisenstein, the revolutionary filmmaker who reshaped cinema --- and was nearly crushed by the system he helped glorify. From the triumph of Battleship Potemkin to the torment of censorship, exile, and artistic compromise under Stalin, Yakhina traces Eisenstein’s life as a drama of creation under pressure. Moscow, Berlin, Paris and Mexico flicker past as art, politics, sexuality and power collide. Yakhina explores the cost of genius in an authoritarian world, the body as both instrument and battleground, and the impossible demand placed on artists to serve ideology without losing themselves.