ISBN: 9780231183796
Editorial: Columbia
Año de edición: 2018
N° Paginas: 240
Tipo de pasta: Pasta blanda
Descripción: Mikhail Zoshchenko'sSentimental Tales are satirical portraits of small-town characters on the fringes of Soviet society in the first decade of Bolshevik rule. The tales are narrated by one Kolenkorov, who is anything but a model Soviet author: not only is he still attached to the era of the old regime, he is also, quite simply, not a very good writer. Shaped by Zoshchenko's masterful hands--he takes credit for editing the tales in a series of comic prefaces--Kolenkorov's prose is beautifully mangled, full of stylistic infelicities, overloaded flights of metaphor, tortured cliché, and misused bureaucratese, in the tradition of Gogol.Yet beneath Kolenkorov's intrusive narration and sublime blathering, the stories are genuinely moving. They tell tales of unrequited love and amorous misadventures among down-on-their-luck musicians, provincial damsels, aspiring poets, and liberal aristocrats hopelessly out of place in the new Russia, against a backdrop of overcrowded apartments, scheming, and daydreaming. Zoshchenko's deadpan style and sly ventriloquy mask a biting critique of Soviet life--and perhaps life in general. An original perspective on Soviet society in the 1920s and simply uproariously funny,Sentimental Tales at last shows Anglophone readers why Zoshchenko is considered among the greatest humorists of the Soviet era. Críticas A gift to the English-speaking world. . . . Boris Dralyuk's translation faithfully recreates the paradoxes that makeSentimental Tales enigmatic, hilarious, and devastating.--Masha Kisel "Translation and Literature "A re-packaging of Zoshchenko for a new generation in dire need of dark humor, and of the sparkling wit of both author and translator.--Jeremy Hicks "The Russian Review "Boris Dralyuk is to be commended for a jaunty translation that keeps pace with the author's whimsical self-amusement, tickling the reader in turn.--Benjamin Paloff "Times Literary Supplement "Boris Dralyuk's translation allows the reader to enjoy Zoschenko's playfully evasive relationship with 'truth' that allowed him to briefly function as such an atypical Soviet author. . . . Zoschenko's wry assessment of the workings of state bureaucracy and their impact on the individual calls to mind the surreality of Nikolai Gogol's Petersburg stories, recast in an age when the system has acquired new rulers but is largely unchanged nonetheless.--Peter Lowe "Russian Art + Culture "Essential for all lovers of Russian literature in its many forms. Humorous, profound, multi-faceted and tragic, theseSentimental Tales will have you laughing and crying at the same time.--Karen Langley "Shiny New Books "I know of no satirist more angry, more warlike than Mikhail Zoshchenko. Yet I love him not for his anger, I love him for his astonishing irony--for the fact that it is sometimes difficult to determine the target of his mockery: is it his characters, his readers, himself? This new translation preserves Zoshchenko's irony in all its force.--Andrey Kurkov, author ofDeath and the PenguinIf you find Chekhov a bit tame and want a more bite to your fiction, then you need a dose of Zoshchenko, the premier Russian satirist of the twentieth century. . . . The translations, as we would expect of Dralyuk, are light and fluid, allowing the full bite of Zoshchenko's voice to power through. Snap up this thin volume and enjoy.--Paul E. Richardson "Russian Life "In the face of ideological pressure to produce heroic forms, Zoshchenko's playful, sly, gallows-humoredSentimental Tales responds with superfluous men. If life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel, Zoshchenko gives us comedy silhouetted in unspoken tragedy. This many-layered pleasure is brought closer to the contemporary reader by a nimble translation by Boris Dralyuk.--Janet Fitch, author ofThe Revolution of Marina M. andPaint It BlackMikhail Zoshchenko is one of Russia's great humorists, not only of the
- Idioma: Inglés
- Autor: Zoshchenko, Mikhail
- Editorial: Columbia
- N° Paginas: 240
- Tipo de pasta: Pasta blanda
- Envío: Desde EE.UU.
