Autobiography of a Corpse by Krzhizhanovsky, Sigizmund

Autobiography of a Corpse (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781590176702)

Vendor: Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
Product type: Books
Format: Paperback
$16.95
$16.95
$16.95
Subtotal: $16.95
Autobiography of a Corpse by Krzhizhanovsky, Sigizmund

Autobiography of a Corpse

$16.95
Autobiography of a Corpse by Krzhizhanovsky, Sigizmund

Autobiography of a Corpse

$16.95
Format: Paperback
Description
Description
x
An NYRB Classics Original

Winner of the 2014 PEN Translation Prize

Winner of the 2014 Read Russia Prize

The stakes are wildly high in Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's fantastic and blackly comic philosophical fables, which abound in nested narratives and wild paradoxes. This new collection of eleven mind-bending and spellbinding tales includes some of Krzhizhanovsky's most dazzling conceits: a provincial journalist who moves to Moscow finds his existence consumed by the autobiography of his room's previous occupant; the fingers of a celebrated pianist's right hand run away to spend a night alone on the city streets; a man's lifelong quest to bite his own elbow inspires both a hugely popular circus act and a new refutation of Kant. Ordinary reality cracks open before our eyes in the pages of Autobiography of a Corpse, and the extraordinary spills out.

Author: Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
ISBN-10: 1590176707
ISBN-13: 9781590176702
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Language: English
Published: 12/03/2013
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.00w x 0.70d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/12/2013
Kirkus Reviews 08/15/2013
New York Times Book Review 11/24/2013 pg. 23
By Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
By Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
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Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (1887-1950), the Ukrainian-born son of Polish emigrants, studied law and classical philology at Kiev University. After graduation and two summers spent exploring Europe, he was obliged to clerk for an attorney. A sinecure, the job allowed him to devote most of his time to literature and his own writing. In 1920, he began lecturing in Kiev on theater and music. The lectures continued in Moscow, where he moved in 1922, by then well known in literary circles. Lodged in a cell-like room on the Arbat, Krzhizhanovsky wrote steadily for close to two decades. His philosophical and phantasmagorical fictions ignored injunctions to portray the Soviet state in a positive light. Three separate efforts to print collections were quashed by the censors, a fourth by World War II. Not until 1989 could his work begin to be published. Like Poe, Krzhizhanovsky takes us to the edge of the abyss and forces us to look into it. "I am interested," he said, "not in the arithmetic, but in the algebra of life."

Joanne Turnbull's translations from Russian in collaboration with Nikolai Formozov include Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's Memories of the Future and The Letter Killers Club (both NYRB Classics).

Adam Thirlwell is the author of two novels, Politics and The Escape; a novella, Kapow!; an essay-book, The Delighted States, winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; and a compendium of translations edited for McSweeney's. He has twice been selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.

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