Chevengur

'The most exciting Russian writer to be rediscovered since the end of the Soviet Union' * Independent *
Like many of Platonov’s remarkable fictions...Chevengur 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. * Spectator *
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
1929: Bolshevism on the brink of Stalinism. In this pivotal year, Andrey Platonov-poet, engineer, true believer wrestling with demons of unbelief-completed his massive lyrical novel Chevengur, where the suffering and violence of a Communist utopia are conveyed not through anger but through sadness, slow-motion pain, and linguistic bewilderment. The reincarnation of this masterwork in English, impeccably midwifed by the Chandlers and placed in context by Platonov's disciple Vladimir Sharov, restores a harrowing vision from inside the beast. -- Caryl Emerson (Princeton University)
[Chevengur] 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. * Publishers Weekly Starred Review *