Medea and Her Children [Paperback]

Medea Georgievna Sinoply Mendez is an iconic figure in her Crimean village, the last remaining pure-blooded Greek in a family that has lived on that coast for centuries. Childless Medea is the touchstone of a large family, which gathers each spring and summer at her home. There are her nieces (sexy Nike and shy Masha), her nephew Georgii (who shares Medea’s devotion to the Crimea), and their friends. In this single summer, the languor of love will permeate the Crimean air, hearts will be broken, and old memories will float to consciousness, allowing us to experience not only the shifting currents of erotic attraction and competition, but also the dramatic saga of this family amid the forces of dislocation, war, and upheaval of twentieth-century Russian life.“One of today’s best Russian writers . . . Alternately witty and affecting, with an impeccable style.”
–The Star-Ledger

“Ulitskaya’s epic narrative of life well lived under the radar of Soviet totalitarianism becomes a testament to the power of that other formidable regime we so innocently refer to as ‘family.’ ”
–Elle

“Medea and Her Childrenis everything one would expect from a modern Russian novel.”
–Los Angeles Times Book Review
Ludmila Ulitskaya’s fiction has been published in many countries, including Russia, France, and Germany;Medea and Her Childrenis her second novel to be published in America. She lives in Moscow.CHAPTER 1

Medea Mendez had the maiden name of Sinoply and was, if we disqualify her younger sister Alexandra who moved to Moscow in the late 1920s, the last remaining pure-blooded Greek of a family settled since time immemorial on the Tauride coast, a land still mindful of its ties with Ancient Greece. She was also the last member of the family who could speak passably the medieval Pontic Greek which survived only in the TaurilÓ"