Petersburg (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Andrei Bely (Author), David McDuff (Translator), Adam Thirlwell (Introduction)

Book Description

Release date: January 31, 2012 | Series: Penguin Classics

"The most important... Russian novel of the 20th century."
-The New York Times Book Review

Considered Andrei Bely's masterpiece, Petersburg, is a pioneering modernist novel, ranked in importance alongside Ulysses, The Metamorphosis, and In Search of Lost Time, that captures Russia's capital during the short, turbulent period of the first socialist revolution in 1905. Exploring themes of history, identity, and family, it sees the young Russian Nikolai Ableukhov chased through the misty Petersburg streets, tasked with planting a bomb intended to kill a government official-his own father. Bely draws on news, fashion, psychology, and ordinary people to create a distinctive and timeless literary triumph.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The most important, most influential and most perfectly realized Russian novel written in the twientieth century. The New York Times Book Review The one novel that sums up the whole of Russia. Anthony Burgess

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Russian --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics; Reprint edition (January 31, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0141191740
• ISBN-13: 978-0141191744
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 1.1 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #299,503 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 52 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the greatest masterpieces of 20th-century prose August 3, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Mass Market Paperback

According to Vladimir Nabokov, this work rates with Joyce's Ulysses and Kafka's Transformations. I'll take this one over its competition. One of the most well-read works of Russia's Silver Age, I recommend it not only as literature but also as cultural history. PLEASE, find an edition of the Maguire and Malmstad translation, it's much more lucid. Bely is difficult enough even if you read Russian; you need all the help in translation you can get. The notes are copious but, if read attentively, help place the book in the cultural context in which it was written.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars You've gotta respect it March 14, 2006

By Ombret

Format:Paperback

In any discussion of Bely's PETERSBURG there eventually arises the question of whether or not it's one of the 20th century's greatest novels. Frankly, I'm not even sure what this means, because what you will take from this book depends very much on what you came for.

Distinctive narrative structure, mind-bending imagery, and creative use of language earn PETERSBURG a place in the literary pantheon. As an important product of the Symbolist movement and a document of Russian revolutionary ferment, it deserves the considerable scholarly attention it has received. The Maguire/Malmstad translation is a tour de force, and their care for their subject is greatly in evidence in what must have been one of the toughest translation tasks ever attempted. For any students out there: if any of the foregoing are of any interest to you, you are in for a treat.

None of these things, however, guarantee that PETERSBURG will be a particularly good choice for the casual reader, and in fact it's an extremely tough row to hoe. The book is noisy, chaotic, cluttered, and at times supremely difficult to follow. As a reader, I felt myself experiencing the book very much as a painting, albeit one viewed through a frenetically shaken magnifying glass. Some of what you'll see will be stunning; much will be baffling. I believe very much that there is sense behind every fragment of this book, but it takes hard work to dig it up, and often just dragging your eyes across the page is not so easy.

As a further stumbling block to many readers, PETERSBURG's beauty relies very much on the beauty of the city of Petersburg itself. The city's atmosphere will be familiar, of course, to almost all Russian readers, but for non-Russians who have not spent time in Petersburg, an important sense of place will be missing.

As other reviewers have noted, the plot is relatively thin, but if you're looking for a good yarn, there are other reasons why PETERSBURG is not a good choice for you. I suspect that very few casual readers--or even folks who just like Russian literature and want to try something from the 20th century--will have the background knowledge needed to put this novel in its intended context. Bely had an audience in mind, and we were not really it.

If you're interested in Russian novels from the 20th century, of course there are many, but please allow me to suggest Bulgakov's THE MASTER AND MARGARITA in place of PETERSBURG. They are not particularly closely related--although, again for students: I sense there's a term paper there--but there is a similarity in their zany madness and Bulgakov is much more approachable.

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful Play of Symbols and Desires October 29, 2002

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Andrei Bely's "Petersburg" is rightly praised as a masterpiece. Knowing Bely's symbolist background, I had exepected the shimmering interlacing of symbols. Yet, while reading the book, I was surprised by the amount of historical and personal desire (and their intertwining) and the masterful way in which it was rendered. Linguistic experiments, grotesque, time-and-space shifts, intertextuality, metatextuality... and, yet, a fully comprehensible narrative! This novel is a true modernist diamond. The book questions what we usually perceive as the predominance of Anglomodernism - yes, the Russians were writing great things after Dostoevsky, too!