In this episode of PDXPLORES, Assistant Professor of Russian in the Department of World Languages and Literatures, Cassio de Oliveira, discusses his latest book, Writing Rogues: The Soviet Picaresque and identity Formation, 1921-1938. In Writing Rogues, Oliveira depicts the ways picaresque literature contributed to the development of Russian identity between the October Revolution and The Stalinists Great Terror. Oliveira sheds light on the heroes and anti-heroes that existed on the margins of societal transformation, and the authors who infused their fictional and non-fictional lives with far-flung adventures, scandals and travels through the criminal underworld.

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