Nina Nikolayevna Sadur (Russian: Нина Николаевна Садур, (born Nina Nikolayevna Kolesnikova; 15 October 1950 – 12 November 2023), also known as Nína 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]

Early life and education

Nina Nikolayevna Sadur was born on 15 October 1950, in Novosibirsk, 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 taught Russian literature and was an actress in amateur plays while her father was a poet.^[1] Sadur began writing poetry and prose at a young age.^[1] As a child, Sadur had an interest in literature and nature.^[1] She wanted to become an entomologist 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 the Moscow Institute of Culture.^[1] She studied under Russian dramatist Viktor Rozov and critic Inna Vishnevskaia at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow,^[2] graduating in 1983.^[1]

Literary career

Sadur wrote short stories and plays while working as a cleaner at the Pushkin Theatre^[2] to support herself.^[1] In 1982, she wrote The Wondrous Wrench, which was performed at the Lenkom and Ermolova as well as by the Moscow 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 wrote The Incriminated Swallow.^[2] The following year, she wrote Go On!, The Power of the Voice and Dawn Will Come Up.^[2] Some of her other works have included They Froze (1987), The Devil in Love, By Magic, Pannochka, A Nose, Brother Chichikov, and Red 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 called This 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 include Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Ray Bradbury, and Clifford 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 and Orthodox 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 published The 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]

Personal life and death

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]

References