{"product_id":"chevengur-isbn-9781681377681","title":"Chevengur","description":"\u003cb\u003eA sort of Soviet \u003ci\u003eDon Quixote\u003c\/i\u003e, this novel about a craftsman who  wanders the U.S.S.R. hoping to ease human misery with his  inventions is considered one of the most important novels of the Soviet  era, and is now available in its full version in English for the first  time.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChevengur\u003c\/i\u003e is a revolutionary novel about revolutionary ardor and despair. Zakhar Pavlovich comes from a world of traditional crafts to work as a train mechanic, motivated by his belief in the transformative power of industry. His adopted son, Sasha Dvanov, embraces revolution, which will transform everything: the words we speak and the lives we live, souls and bodies, the soil underfoot and the sun overhead. Seeking communism, Dvanov joins up with Stepan Kopionkin, a warrior for the cause whose steed is the fearsome cart horse Strength of the Proletariat. Together they cross the steppe, encountering counterrevolutionaries, desperados, and visionaries of all kinds. At last they reach the isolated town of Chevengur. There communism is believed to have been achieved because everything that is not communism has been eliminated. And yet even in Chevengur the revolution recedes from sight. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eComic, ironic, grotesque, disturbingly poetic in its use of language, and profoundly sorrowful, \u003ci\u003eChevengur\u003c\/i\u003e—here published in a new English translation based on the most authoritative Russian text—is the most ambitious of the extraordinary novels that the great Andrey Platonov wrote in the 1920s and 1930s, when Soviet Russia was moving from revolutionary euphoria to state terror.“At nearly 100 years old, Andrey Platonov’s novel \u003ci\u003eChevengur\u003c\/i\u003e is a tome of revolution and grief. What may at first encounter seem a Quixotian expedition across the central Russian steppe, quickly turns into a philosophical novel probing the deepest questions on Russia’s October revolution and the communist society that would follow it. Centered around the fictional city of Chevengur, located in Russia’s central steppe, Platonov’s novel offers a glimpse into what an open and enlightened philosophical debate might have looked like in the early days of the Soviet Union...with flashes of romance and much of the open steppe, the novel promises both the seasoned Russophile and the curious newcomer something unique on every page.” —Jack McClelland, \u003ci\u003eOn the Seawall \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eChevengur\u003c\/i\u003e is unlike anything else in Russian or Soviet literature. The period in which it was written, as the revolution gives way to Stalinism, is also a time in which language is torn asunder...This is a novel where man and men, in all their foolishness, live together, at least for a while.” —Duncan Stuart, “Exit Only”  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Platonov is not just a voice of his generation but a sage to our own, warning us that the flaws of human idealism are condemned to overshadow its realized visions.” —Michael Barron, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Today, few books offer the level of insight into modern Russian history as \u003ci\u003eChevengur\u003c\/i\u003e does, a 1929 novel by the Soviet writer Andrey Platonov, composed as the Bolsheviks established the Soviet Union and consolidated power.” —Anastasia Edel, \u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"While it’s a commonplace to say a writer has a style all his own, no one quite resembles Platonov. He’s simultaneously a documentarian sharing a slideshow of the Soviet Union’s bloody history and a fabulist forging a prescient Russian version of magical realism. His touch is light. Without a conventional plot or character development, he leaves readers with vivid memories....More than translators, the Chandlers are in the business of literary reclamation. They previously translated Platonov’s \u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit, Soul\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eHappy Moscow\u003c\/i\u003e, all of which have their roots in \u003ci\u003eChevengur\u003c\/i\u003e. Without the Chandlers, English-speakers would probably know Vasily Grossman as a mere footnote to Russian literature, rather than the author of \u003ci\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/i\u003e, one of the previous century’s supreme novels. Without the Chandlers, Platonov, too, might have remained an obscurity among Anglophone readers. Now we have Platonov and his finest novel, \u003ci\u003eChevengur\u003c\/i\u003e, thanks to the Chandlers.\" —Patrick Kurp, The Wall Street Journal\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"By turns picaresque, ethereal, tragic and poetic, \u003ci\u003eChevengur\u003c\/i\u003e is without doubt one of the great 20th-century modernist parables.\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eTaken together with Platonov’s other major novel, \u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e—also available in translation by the Chandlers—it firmly establishes the author alongside Vasily Grossman as one of the great Soviet writers.\" —Bryan Karetnyk, \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A superb work of Soviet-era Russian literature in a welcome, well-annotated new translation.\" —\u003ci\u003eKirkus \u003c\/i\u003eStarred Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[\u003ci\u003eChevengur\u003c\/i\u003e] is at once comic and rich in pathos: Platonov’s depictions of the long-suffering peasantry can veer toward the absurd...but he draws them in great detail, lending them gravity and humanity through measured prose and a bend toward realism.” —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly \u003c\/i\u003eStarred Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Like many of Platonov’s remarkable fictions...\u003ci\u003eChevengur\u003c\/i\u003e offers contemporary readers a wholly imagined, often surprising and by turns terrifying and delightful world. It is one in which magic realism doesn’t predominate but which is invested by an otherworldly testimony about our dizzyingly unbelievable history, and brought to memorable life by a man who wasn’t afraid of telling all that he knew, believed and hoped.” —Scott Bradfield, \u003ci\u003eThe Spectator\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“There is only one planet that we share, and the sense of belonging to this planet emerges, in miniature, on the steppes of Chevengur…. The speech of Platonov’s characters is the voice of the voiceless, but it is also the noise of grasses being digested in hungry stomachs, the silence of Kopionkin’s horse, and the murmur of the steppes.” —Maria Chehonadskih, \u003ci\u003eThe Nation \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eAndrey Platonovich Platonov\u003c\/b\u003e (1899–1951) was one of the finest Russian writers of the 20th century, though much of his work was suppressed during his lifetime due to his critical view of Stalin (which he maintained alongside his faith in communism). He began publishing poems and articles in 1918 while studying engineering, and much of his work concerns the utopian promise of technology. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he wrote his most politically controversial works—including \u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit, Soul, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eHappy Moscow\u003c\/i\u003e—though they were first published in the Soviet Union over three decades later. \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eElizabeth Chandler \u003c\/b\u003eand \u003cb\u003eRobert Chandler\u003c\/b\u003e are co-translators of many works from the Russian, best known for bringing Vasily Grossman’s work—including \u003ci\u003eThe People Immortal, Stalingrad, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/i\u003e—to English-language audiences. Their previous translations of Platonov—\u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit, Soul, and Happy Moscow \u003c\/i\u003e(all NYRB Classics)—have won prizes in the U.S. and U.K. They live in London.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300104884453,"sku":"NP9781681377681","price":26.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681377681.jpg?v=1767723626","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/chevengur-isbn-9781681377681","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}