Nikolai Nikolaevich and Camouflage

Two Novels

Häftad, Engelska, 2019

AvYuz Aleshkovsky,Susanne Fusso

359 kr

Beställningsvara. Skickas inom 3-6 vardagar. Fri frakt för medlemmar vid köp för minst 249 kr.

Finns i fler format (1)

Inbunden

949 kr

Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar

Among contemporary Russian writers, Yuz Aleshkovsky stands out for his vivid imagination, his mixing of realism and fantasy, and his virtuosic use of the rich tradition of Russian obscene language. These two novels, written in the 1970s, display Aleshkovsky’s linguistic gifts and keen observations of Soviet life.Nikolai Nikolaevich begins when its titular hero, a pickpocket by trade, is released from prison after World War II and finds a job in a Moscow biological laboratory. Starting out as a kind of janitor, he is soon recruited to provide sperm for strange experiments intended to create life in the Andromeda galaxy. The hero finds himself at the center of the 1948 purge of biological science in the Soviet Union, in a transgressive tale that joins science fiction (and science fact) with gulag slang and a love story. The protagonist and narrator of Camouflage is an alcoholic who claims that he and his gang of friends are just one part of a vast camouflaging operation organized by the Party to hide the Soviet Union’s underground military-industrial complex from the CIA’s spy satellites. As they pass their time on the streets and share their alcohol-inspired fantasies, they see the stark reality of the Cold War in Russia in the late seventies. Nikolai Nikolaevich and Camouflage introduces English-speaking readers to a master of the comic first-person narrative.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2019-06-11
Mått140 x 216 x 12 mm
Vikt288 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor232
FörlagColumbia University Press
ISBN9780231189675
ÖversättareWhite, Duffield

Tillhör följande kategorier

Modern och samtida romaner inom Skonlitteratur

Yuz Aleshkovsky was born in 1929 in Krasnoyarsk and grew up in Moscow. He served in the Soviet navy and was imprisoned from 1950 to 1953 for “violating discipline.” He published children’s books but became best known for his songs and novels circulated in samizdat before he emigrated to the United States in 1979. His works in English include The Hand (1989) and Kangaroo (1999).Duffield White is professor emeritus of Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies at Wesleyan University. He is the translator of Tolstoi in the Sixties by Boris Eikhenbaum (1982).Susanne Fusso is Marcus L. Taft Professor of Modern Languages and professor of Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies at Wesleyan University. She is the translator of Trepanation of the Skull by Sergey Gandlevsky (2014).

Joseph Brodsky once noted that Aleshkovsky had a Mozartian ear for the Russian language, and Nikolai Nikolaevich (1970), his first novel, as well as Camouflage (1978), his fourth – written the year before the author emigrated permanently to the US – are indeed virtuoso performances. . . . Staying faithful to Aleshkovsky’s foul-mouthed muse, White’s translation, edited by Fusso, mines the rich muck of anglophone cussing with evident glee, and the effect is delightful.