Dispatches from the District Committee

Vladimir Sorokin author Max Lawton translator Gregory Klassen illustrator Will Self editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Dalkey Archive Press

Publishing:6th Mar '25

£14.00

This title is due to be published on 6th March, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

Dispatches from the District Committee cover

Grotesque, deconstructive, and absolutely genius, Vladimir Sorokin’s short story collection Dispatches from the District Committee is a revelatory, offbeat portrait of Soviet life beyond the propaganda and state-sponsored realism.

Celebrated—and censored—for its political satire, literary irreverence, and provocative themes, Sorokin's work has been recognized across the world for its scathing, darkly humorous commentary on political and cultural oppression in the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia.

Dispatches from the District Committee brings together stories from Sorokin’s incendiary 1992 collection The First Subotnik/My First Working Saturday and elsewhere. Skillfully translated by Max Lawton, these stories remain subversive classics, and increasingly relevant in a post-truth information age.

"Sorokin, global literature's postmodern provocateur, is both a savage and satirist and a consummate showman." —Dustin Illingworth, The New York Times Book Review

"[Sorokin's] disorienting prose forces the mind to react—to focus, to sharpen—and urges us to be on guard against revered forms and the literary conventions of authority." Harper's

"Sorokin is widely regarded as one of Russia's most inventive writers." The New York Times

"For American readers today, already getting sci-fi shell-shocked by war news, political crime news, medical news, ... this helps spotlight (without a narrator and without stage directions), how we read, how we avoid, how we survive." —Bruce Andrews

"Socialist Realism has been tried and found guilty. Guilty of annoying edification, stifling clichés, propagandistic lies voiced by its stock characters, and fear of the body in all its messy manifestations. In Dispatches from the District Committee, Vladimir Sorokin acts as its executioner. Each short story is a Grand Guignol performance, in which Soviet style is condemned to a gruesome death. Don't feel sorry for Socialist Realism; just lean back and enjoy its just deserts in Max Lawton's masterful translation." The Untranslated

“Sorokin's books are like entering a crazy nightmare, and I mean that as a compliment ... He was able to find the right vocabulary with which to articulate the truth." —Gary Shteyngart

"Sorokin’s sudden exposure is long overdue as he is probably both the most acclaimed and the most controversial author in Russia today, hailed by critics as a ‘living classic’ even as his subject matter takes the tradition of Russian grotesque into areas Gogol or even the Stalin-era absurdist Daniil Kharms never dared venture." —Daniel Kalder, Publishing Perspectives

ISBN: 9781628975178

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

180 pages