| Nikolai Nikolaevich and Camouflage: Two Novels Contributor(s): Aleshkovsky, Yuz (Author), White, Duffield (Translator), Fusso, Susanne (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0231189672 ISBN-13: 9780231189675 Publisher: Columbia University Press OUR PRICE: $14.36 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: June 2019 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Satire |
| Dewey: 891.734 |
| LCCN: 2018043952 |
| Series: Russian Library |
| Physical Information: 0.8" H x 5.5" W x 8.4" (0.60 lbs) 232 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Russia |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Among contemporary Russian writers, Yuz Aleshkovsky stands out for his vivid imagination, his mixing of realism and fantasy, and his virtuosic use of the rich tradition of Russian obscene language. These two novels, written in the 1970s, display Aleshkovsky's linguistic gifts and keen observations of Soviet life. Nikolai Nikolaevich begins when its titular hero, a pickpocket by trade, is released from prison after World War II and finds a job in a Moscow biological laboratory. Starting out as a kind of janitor, he is soon recruited to provide sperm for strange experiments intended to create life in the Andromeda galaxy. The hero finds himself at the center of the 1948 purge of biological science in the Soviet Union, in a transgressive tale that joins science fiction (and science fact) with gulag slang and a love story. The protagonist and narrator of Camouflage is an alcoholic who claims that he and his gang of friends are just one part of a vast camouflaging operation organized by the Party to hide the Soviet Union's underground military-industrial complex from the CIA's spy satellites. As they pass their time on the streets and share their alcohol-inspired fantasies, they see the stark reality of the Cold War in Russia in the late seventies. Nikolai Nikolaevich and Camouflage introduces English-speaking readers to a master of the comic first-person narrative. |
Contributor Bio(s): Aleshkovsky, Yuz: - Yuz Aleshkovsky was born in 1929 in Krasnoyarsk and grew up in Moscow. He served in the Soviet navy and was imprisoned from 1950 to 1953 for "violating discipline." He published children's books but became best known for his songs and novels circulated in samizdat before he emigrated to the United States in 1979. His novels Kangaroo and The Hand were published in English translation in the 1980s. In 2001 he received the Pushkin Prize of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation for his entire body of work. He lives in Middletown, Connecticut. |