7 Stories (New Russian Writing) [Paperback]

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 11, 2006 | Series: New Russian Writing (Book 39)

"All of Krzhizhanovsky's stories depict something aberrant, which is strongly rooted in something true."—Bookforum

"It is now clear that Krzhizhanovsky is one of the greatest Russian writers of the last century."—Financial Times

"A natural storyteller, striking intellect, and deeply creative soul are found all in one—a rare combination."—Complete Review

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About the Author

One of the greatest Russian writers of the 20th century, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (1887-1950) was, by his own admission, "known for being unknown". Like his better-known contemporary, Bulgakov, Krzhizhanovsky was born in Kiev and moved to Moscow in the early 1920s. The Bolshevik Revolution had put an end to his brief career as a lawyer, freeing him to devote all of his mind and energy to writing and philosophy.
In his viewless room – so small it must once have been a larder – that Krzhizhanovsky wrote his strange, philosophical, satirical, lyrical phantasmagorias including the seven incomparable stories in this collection: "Quadraturin", "Autobiography of a Corpse", "The Bookmark", "In the Pupil", "The Runaway Fingers", "Yellow Coal" and "The Unbitten Elbow".
The author of five novellas, a hundred-odd stories, a dozen plays, screenplays and librettos, and dozens of essays, he went to his grave "a literary nonentity." Unearthed by chance, Krzhizhanovsky's collected works (3,000 pages) are only now being brought out in Russian. He was a writer-thinker. Many of his stories have the quality of a problem or puzzle: "I am interested," he said, "not in the arithmetic, but in the algebra of life." The constant rejections eventually drove Krzhizhanovsky to drink. Asked what had brought him to wine, he joked: "A sober attitude towards reality." On December 28, 1950, the critic Georgii Shengeli drew a black frame around this entry in his notebook: "Today Sigizmund Dominikovich Krzhizhanovsky died, a writer-visionary, an unsung genius."

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: GLAS New Russian Writing; 1 edition (November 11, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 5717200730
• ISBN-13: 978-5717200738
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,160,249 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Unknown Genius, September 7, 2008

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This review is from: 7 Stories (New Russian Writing) (Paperback)

A fantastic and all-too-small collection of stories by a forgotten Russian writer and intellectual who was a celebrated friend of the major players in Moscow theatre and intellectual life of the 1920s and 1930s. His lack of luck at getting published has made him a new and exciting gem not for his generation, but for ours, after Vadim Perel'muter discovered and began publishing Krzhizhanovsky's works in Russian in the 1990s. Krzhizhanovsky's ironic and playful, yet exceedingly philosophic and melancholic style is sure to remind variously of Borges, Kafka, Poe, and more, yet Krzhizhanovsky is by all means unique. These stories apprehend the Soviet reality in very much their own way.