Soul: And Other Stories Contributor(s): Platonov, Andrey (Author), Chandler, Robert (Translator), Chandler, Robert (Introduction by) |
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ISBN: 159017254X ISBN-13: 9781590172544 Publisher: New York Review of Books
WE WILL NOT BE UNDERSOLD! Click here for our low price guarantee Binding Type: Paperback - See All Available Formats & Editions Published: December 2007 Annotation: A New York Review Books Original "Soul" offers a selection of the great Soviet writer Andrey Platonov's finest stories--works that show him at his tenderest, warmest, and subtlest--together with a prizewinning new translation of the extraordinary title novella, about which George Szirtes has written: "The yearning is so intense it glows through the language. Maybe that glow is what we think of as soul." These stories bring out the tensions between everyday life and the ideal. In "The River Potudan" the hero finds himself unable to make love to his wife for fear of hurting her. In "Among Animals and Plants" the disssatisified family of railway worker watches the splendid express trains rushing by and imagines that utopia already exists in Stalin's Soviet Union--everywhere, that is, except in their own remote hamlet. "The Return," chosen by Penelope Fitzgerald as one of "three great works of Russian literature of the millennium," is about a Soviet officer's difficult adjustment to family life at the end of the World War II: Should he start a new life with a young woman he met on the journey or accept an imperfect life with his damaged family? TABLE OF CONTENTS |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Short Stories (single Author) - Fiction | Political - Fiction | Psychological |
Dewey: FIC |
LCCN: 2007029771 |
Physical Information: 0.85" H x 5.1" W x 8.02" L (0.89 lbs) 400 pages |
Features: Bibliography, Illustrated, Price on Product, Table of Contents |
Review Citations: New York Review of Books 04/29/2010 pg. 53 |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: A New York Review Books Original The Soviet writer Andrey Platonov saw much of his work suppressed or censored in his lifetime. In recent decades, however, these lost works have reemerged, and the eerie poetry and poignant humanity of Platonov's vision have become ever more clear. For Nadezhda Mandelstam and Joseph Brodsky, Platonov was the writer who most profoundly registered the spiritual shock of revolution. For a new generation of innovative post-Soviet Russian writers he figures as a daring explorer of word and world, the master of what has been called "alternative realism." Depicting a devastated world that is both terrifying and sublime, Platonov is, without doubt, a universal writer who is as solitary and haunting as Kafka. This volume gathers eight works that show Platonov at his tenderest, warmest, and subtlest. Among them are "The Return," about an officer's difficult homecoming at the end of World War II, described by Penelope Fitzgerald as one of "three great works of Russian literature of the millennium"; "The River Potudan," a moving account of a troubled marriage; and the title novella, the extraordinary tale of a young man unexpectedly transformed by his return to his Asian birthplace, where he finds his people deprived not only of food and dwelling, but of memory and speech. This prizewinning English translation is the first to be based on the newly available uncensored texts of Platonov's short fiction. |
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