Categories: travels
Date: 22 August 2007 15:17:18
One of the strangest things about Russia is the lack of copyright laws (or at least western style copyright laws). This means that most things tend to get pirated, even literary characters. There is a word for this - samizdat.
I had a look in a Russian book shop earlier to discover a whole slew of Harry Potter knock offs - completely unauthorised further adventures and outright clones including "Tanya Potter" - I couldn't tell from the blurb on the back cover but I suspect Tanya Potter is either Harry's Russian internet bride or his oddly slavic (and previously unmentioned) sister. If you are mourning the end of the series you could do worse than learn Russian and come to St Petersburg. Of course "worse' is a strictly qualtative term. You could for instance type "Harry Potter Slash Fiction" into google. You could do that, but it would take you to a website far more horrible than St Petersburg at it's worst - so I wouldn't advise it.