From the Russian Desk, Supplement 1
A rash of savage murders break out across Moscow, the only similarity between the victims being that each is fair-haired and blue-eyed, and that each has his or her chest caved in, their hearts burst open by some unknown blunt force object. The murder weapon? A crude sledgehammer fashioned from a fallen chunk of cosmic ice.
This is the premise of Vladimir Sorokin’s ICE. Even were he not hailed as one of the few living Russian writers to be destined for actual greatness, the simple fact that he has been translated into English, and by NYRB no less, would attest to the quality of his novels. Both ICE and Sorokin’s earlier novel The Queue – a book which takes place entirely in…well…in line for something; in fact, in line for some eternally unknown macguffin – are now in stock here.
OK, I just want to type this again: chests caved in and hearts burst open by an assailant wielding a crude sledgehammer fashioned from a chunk of interstellar ice.
Wheesh… I feel like some spectre of ineffable darkness just warped over my tomb. That’s how cool it is.
Anyhow, in our last shipment we also received an NYRB collection of poems from pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg’s Stray Dog Cabaret, the infamous haunt where poets, artists, musicians, Futurists, Acmeists, Symbolists, revolutionary youth gathered to confer, declare, declaim, conspire, and foment. Some of my favorite poets of all time are included in this awesome collection, including Aleksandr Blok, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Velimir Khlebnikov, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelshtam. Check in our Poetry Anthology section downstairs, Stray Dog Cabaret.
Also, we have an NYRB copy of Selected Poems of Osip Mandelshtam, one of the founders of the Acemist school of poetry along with Anna Akhmatova. Incarcerated and released and shipped around courtesy of the gulag system, he famously wrote: “Only in Russia is poetry respected – it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?” Though his life was indeed cut tragically short, fulfilling his own grim prophecy in the most grim fashion, the mark his poetry has left upon Russian culture and world poetry is both brilliant and indelible, outlasting his ignominious and anonymous execution in the gulag.
New copies of Andrei Platonov’s great novel Soul are in stock, bound by NYRB to include a number of his excellent short stories such as “The Return” and “The Motherland of Electricity”. We also have his Foundation Pit, a great and chilling fable of futility and bleak despair on the Soviet workforce.
Finally, Pevear and Volokhonsky’s new translation of Tolstoy’s short fiction has finally arrived. The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Other Stories is destined, in my book, to become a definitive translation of some of Tolstoy’s most indomitable works, including my personal all-time favorite, “Hadji Murat”. You could do a lot worse than give or receive this as a present for the holidays.
There’s my 2 cents.
Warmest regards from the Russian Desk.
P.S. CRUDE SLEDGEHAMMER FORMED FROM INDESTRUCTIBLE COSMIC ICE USED TO PERPETRATE TERRIBLE VIOLENCE IN AND UPON THE CHEST CAVITIES OF ARYAN-FEATURED MUSCOVITES.
I feel a great warmth well up in me.
