Abstract

The essay analyses the atypical concept of border in the povest’ by Ljudmila Ulickaja Vesëlye pochorony (1997). This short novel offers several images related to the symbolic setting represented mainly by the city of New York, which embodies an idealized ‘border city’, where some Russian immigrants arrive and meet in 1991. First of all my research aims to examine the role played by a few peculiar places represented in Vesëlye pochorony, in order to highlight the emotional dynamics of some Ulickaja’s characters, who have to face the difficulties of integration in a cultural and social environment, totally different from the one they come from. Moreover this essay investigates the devised priemy by Ulickaja, in order to understand the writer’s metaphorical meaning of New York city, intended as a positive and idealized abstraction of a society capable to host any kind of people experiencing their own tough migration process and subsequent critical phase of their social and cultural inclusion.