{"product_id":"the-foundation-pit-isbn-9781590173053","title":"The Foundation Pit","description":"Translated from the Russian by Robert \u0026amp; Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson\u003cbr\u003eWith notes and an afterword by Robert Chandler and Olga Meerson\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn Andrey Platonov’s \u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e, a team of workers has been given the job of digging the foundation of an immense edifice, a palatial home for the perfect future that, they are convinced, is at hand. But the harder the team works, the deeper they dig, the more things go wrong, and it becomes clear that what is being dug is not a foundation but an immense grave.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e is Platonov’s most overtly political book, written in direct response to the staggering brutalities of Stalin’s collectivization of Russian agriculture. It is also a literary masterpiece. Seeking to evoke unspeakable realities, Platonov deforms and transforms language in pages that echo both with the alienating doublespeak of power and the stark simplicity of prayer. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis English translation is the first and only one to be based on the definitive edition published by Pushkin House in Moscow. It includes extensive notes and, in an appendix, several striking passages deleted by Platonov. Robert Chandler and Olga Meerson’s afterword discusses the historical context and style of Platonov’s most haunted and troubling work.\u003cp\u003e\"I squint back on our century and I see six writers I think it will be remembered for.  They are Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, William Faulkner, Andrey Platonov and Samuel Beckett.... They are summits in the literary landscape of our century ... What's more, they don't lose an inch of their status when compared to the giants of fiction from the previous century.\"—Joseph Brodsky\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Hallucinatory and terrifying and filled with incredible language, this is Platonov’s finest.” —\u003ci\u003eFlavorwire\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The most exciting literary discovery I made this past year was Andrey Platonov… his reputation has grown to the point that he is frequently considered the greatest Russian prose writer of the twentieth century. His masterpiece is \u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e, which boils all the utopianism and horror of the forced collectivization and industrialization of the early 1930s into 150 tightly written…. English-speaking readers are lucky to have the superb translation by Robert Chandler and Olga Meerson, published last year by New York Review Books…. Platonov’s brilliant short works can be sampled in the collection \u003ci\u003eSoul\u003c\/i\u003e, also published by NYRB.” —The Millions\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Andrey Platonov has not yet received the attention he richly deserves here...[he]  turns out to be one of the finest writers of the 20th century, worthy to stand alongside  Kafka and Joyce.\" --The Arts Fuse\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"He has been described as the greatest Russian  writer of the 20th century, but some of his most controversial works, written between  1927 and 1932, were not published in the Soviet Union until the 1980s. Platonov's  \u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e is a satirical response to Stalin's programme of crash industrialisation  and collectivisation.\" –\u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"\u003c\/b\u003ePlatonov's writing can retain enormous power  in English...The foreign reader can also now begin to get an idea of the shape of  Platonov's development as a writer. \u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e, written at the time of the  brutal collectivization campaign of the late 1920s, plays out an image of equally  brutal directness–a construction site on which nothing ever gets built. The pit just  gets wider and deeper until it comes to represent a grave - of Stalinism's Promethean  ambitions, and of the author's political idealism. The effect on the reader is almost  physically winding.\" –\u003ci\u003eThe Moscow Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Acclaimed by Joseph Brodsky as one of the  great Russian writers of the twentieth century, Andrey Platonov comes with a formidable  reputation, matched only by his relative obscurity.\" –\u003ci\u003eThe Observer\u003c\/i\u003e (London)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Andrey  Platonov is the most exciting Russian writer to be rediscovered since the end of  the Soviet Union. Born in 1899, one of a railway worker's 10 children, he was an  engineer, a party member and a model proletarian writer before doubts about Communism,  and his literary imagination, landed him in trouble with Stalin. His work stopped  being published in the early 1930s and only resurfaced 40 years after his death in  1951...\u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e will stand out as his masterpiece.\" –\u003ci\u003eThe Independent\u003c\/i\u003e (London)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"In Platonov's prose, it is impossible to find a single dull or inelegant sentence...  For Platonov's work testifies to the only political responsibility owed by any writer  to any reader: to describe the world as faithfully, and as compellingly, as possible.  Platonov deserves to be published; he rewards being read.\" –\u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e (London)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"In Russian writer Andrei Platonov's novel \u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e, written in 1930 but  not published in Russia until 1987, the characters must struggle not only with the  interminable Soviet works project of the title, but with strange spiritual maladies...One  of the most deeply original writers of the 20th century.\" –\u003ci\u003eThe National Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Nearly  all his work is rooted in a particular place and time, and it is hard to think of  another writer who so expertly animated the sadness and unease of the Soviet period.  His fiction, at its best, has the timeless quality of parable or folklore.\" –\u003ci\u003eNew  Statesman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Counting Andrei Platonov among the greatest Russian prose writers of  this century, Joseph Brodsky considered him to be 'quite untranslatable, and, in  one sense, that's a good thing: for the language into which he cannot be translated.'  \u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e distresses the Russian language, showing it splayed and shattered  by the demands of revolution. In this nihilistic allegory, completed in 1930 but  not published in the Soviet Union until 1987, workers dig the foundation pit for  an enormous dwelling to be called the All-Proletarian Home...a grim, readable Platonov  whose most familiar neighbor, in apocalyptic sensibility, is Samuel Beckett.\" –\u003ci\u003eThe  New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Andrey Platonov is one of Russia's greatest modernist scribes. Like  his fellow science-fiction writer Yevgeny Zamyatin - author of the astonishing futurist  novel We, published in the 20s - he was also among that tortured country's most prescient  literary artists...\u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e, written in 1930 and now published for the  first time in English, is his most striking attempt to convey the extreme estrangement  suffered by ordinary people as collectivisation in agriculture proceeded across the  USSR...one of the most prophetic nihilistic tales of this ruined century.\" –\u003ci\u003eThe West  Australian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Completed in 1930 but unpublished during his lifetime, Platonov's masterpiece,  a scathing satire of the Soviet attempt to build a workers' utopia, gauges the vast  human tragedy of Stalinism, portraying a society organized and regimented around  a monstrous lie, and thus bereft of meaning, hope, integrity, humanity...His dark  parable is a great dirge for Mother Russia as well as a savage analysis of the split  consciousness fostered by an oppressive system. Platonov's books are still being  unearthed in Russia decades after his death.\" –\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Andrey Platonov's  absurdist parable \u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e is a masterly achievement...Much of the genius  of \u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit \u003c\/i\u003elies in Platonov's objective style and the lively invariably  abusive dialogue, contrasting with oddly moving, isolated asides of brittle beauty.  It is a Russian \u003ci\u003eWaiting for Godot\u003c\/i\u003e crossed with Lewis Carroll and Maxim Gorky - there  is even a bear working as an apprentice blacksmith, frantically making horseshoes  as if there were no tomorrow. And in this book, there isn't. According to the late  Joseph Brodsky, Platonov 'simply had a tendency to see his words to their logical  - that is absurd, that is totally paralyzing end. In other words, like no other Russian  writer before or after him Platonov was able to reveal a self destructive, eschatological  element within the language itself.' \u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e is extraordinary: strange,  almost abrupt, a hallucinatory, nightmarish parable of hysterical laughter and terrifying  silences.\" –\u003ci\u003eThe Irish Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"These books are indescribable. The power of devastation  they inflict upon their subject matter exceeds by far any demands of social criticism  and should be measured in units that have very little to do with literature as such.\"  –Joseph Brodsky\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A 20th-century Russian masterpiece...\u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e is a savage  satire on collectivisation, a nightmarish vision of humanity trapped by the infernal  machinery of totalitarianism...\u003ci\u003ePlatonov's\u003c\/i\u003e grimly comic vision of a brave new world  is as universal in its implications as any other account of a hellish utopia our  century has produced..the dance of madness in \u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e is articulated as  the suppression of anything human - sorrow and joy, hope and despair.\" –\u003ci\u003eThe Sydney  Morning Herald\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Like Candide, Platonov's novel is a plotless allegory of human striving...The  forced industrialisation of Russia, which began in 1928 and is the historical background  of \u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e, left an estimated 15.2m dead. Even if one considers Platonov's  masterpiece merely as a conte philosophique, one may note that his model universe  was more amply observed than Voltaire's. He was also a writer perhaps the only writer  to have advanced Russian prose beyond what had been achieved by Chekhov not a philosopher  in literary disguise...\" –\u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e (London)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Brilliant...Obviously a masterpiece.\"  –Paul Theroux\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Perhaps the only writer to have advanced Russian prose beyond what  had been achieved by Chekhov.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e (London)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“One of Russia’s most insistent  and valuable dissident voices.” –\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Among the greatest Russian prose  writers of this century.” –\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“In Russia it is Platonov who is increasingly  described as the best writer of the post-revolutionary epoch.” –\u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e (London)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCompleted in 1930 but unpublished during his lifetime, Platonov’s masterpiece, a scathing satire of the Soviet attempt to build a workers’ utopia, gauges the vast human tragedy of Stalinism, portraying a society organized and regimented around a monstrous lie, and thus bereft of meaning, hope, integrity, humanity...His dark parable is a great dirge for Mother Russia as well as a savage analysis of the split consciousness fostered by an oppressive system. Platonov’s books are still being unearthed in Russia decades after his death.\u003cbr\u003e— \u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn Russia it is Platonov who is increasingly described as the best writer of the post-revolutionary epoch.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003endrey Platonov is the most exciting Russian writer to be rediscovered since the end of the Soviet Union. Born in 1899, one of a railway worker’s 10 children, he was an engineer, a party member and a model proletarian writer before doubts about Communism, and his literary imagination, landed him in trouble with Stalin. His work stopped being published in the early 1930s and only resurfaced 40 years after his death in 1951...\u003ci\u003eThe Foundation Pit\u003c\/i\u003e will stand out as his masterpiece.\u003cbr\u003e— \u003ci\u003eThe Independent \u003c\/i\u003e(London) \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eAndrey Platonov\u003c\/b\u003e (1899—1951) was born in a village near the Russian town of Voronezh. He began to publish poems and stories in the 1920s and worked as a land reclamation expert in central Russia, where he was a witness to the ravages of the Great Famine. In the 1930s Platonov fell into disfavor with the Soviet government and his writing disappeared from sight. NYRB Classics published a new translation of \u003ci\u003eSoul and Other Stories\u003c\/i\u003e in 2007. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRobert Chandler\u003c\/b\u003e has translated selections of Sappho and Apollinaire and is the editor of \u003ci\u003eRussian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida\u003c\/i\u003e.  His translations from Russian include Pushkin's \u003ci\u003eDubrovsky\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Captain’s Daughter\u003c\/i\u003e, Leskov's \u003ci\u003eLady Macbeth of Mtsensk\u003c\/i\u003e, Vasily Grossman’s \u003ci\u003eLife and Fate\u003c\/i\u003e and Hamid Ismailov’s \u003ci\u003eThe Railway\u003c\/i\u003e.  His co-translations of Andrey Platonov have won prizes in the UK and the US.  His \u003ci\u003eAlexander Pushkin\u003c\/i\u003e is published by Hesperus in their series of ‘Brief Lives’.  He teaches part time at Queen Mary, University of London.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eElizabeth Chandler\u003c\/b\u003e is a co-translator of several volumes of Platonov and of Pushkin’s \u003ci\u003eThe Captain’s Daughter.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eOlga Meerson\u003c\/b\u003e teaches at Georgetown University and is the author of \u003ci\u003eDostoevsky’s Taboos\u003c\/i\u003e (in English) and\u003ci\u003e Platonov's Poetic of Re-Familiarization \u003c\/i\u003e(in Russian\u003ci\u003e). \u003c\/i\u003eShe is a co-translator of Platonov’s  \u003ci\u003eSoul and Other Stories\u003c\/i\u003e, which, in 2004, was awarded the AATSEEL prize for \"best translation from a Slavonic language\".","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302267146469,"sku":"NP9781590173053","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590173053.jpg?v=1767739404","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-foundation-pit-isbn-9781590173053","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}