“There is Nothing There.” Dmitrii Danilov’s Travel Writing and the Lure of the Russian Provinces

Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s seminal study The Practice of Everyday Life, the author argues that Dmitrii Danilov’s travel writing (Twenty Cities, 2007-2009) reimagines Russia’s symbolic geography by destabilizing traditional opposition centre – periphery. Rather than depicting provincial world as either an absurd and horrid world, or a repository “true Russianness”, Danilov provides “decentred” perspective provinces asserts uniqueness each city he visits. novel Description City (2012), however, resurrects more view boredom cultural lack. To analyse this development article looks at central figure sluggish traveller-narrator, employment “camera-eye narration” other, mainly linguistic, devices reaffirm notion city’s “namelessness” one its most defining characteristics.