Chevengur
No Customer Reviews
Select Format
Select Condition 
Book Overview
A sort of Soviet Don Quixote, this novel about a craftsman who wanders the U.S.S.R. hoping to ease human misery with his inventions is considered one of the most important novels of the Soviet era, and is now available in its full version in English for the first time.
Chevengur is a revolutionary novel about revolutionary ardor and despair. Zakhar Pavlovich comes from a world of traditional crafts to work as a train mechanic, motivated by his belief in the transformative power of industry. His adopted son, Sasha Dvanov, embraces revolution, which will transform everything: the words we speak and the lives we live, souls and bodies, the soil underfoot and the sun overhead. Seeking communism, Dvanov joins up with Stepan Kopionkin, a warrior for the cause whose steed is the fearsome cart horse Strength of the Proletariat. Together they cross the steppe, encountering counterrevolutionaries, desperados, and visionaries of all kinds. At last they reach the isolated town of Chevengur. There communism is believed to have been achieved because everything that is not communism has been eliminated. And yet even in Chevengur the revolution recedes from sight. Comic, ironic, grotesque, disturbingly poetic in its use of language, and profoundly sorrowful, Chevengur--here published in a new English translation based on the most authoritative Russian text--is the most ambitious of the extraordinary novels that the great Andrey Platonov wrote in the 1920s and 1930s, when Soviet Russia was moving from revolutionary euphoria to state terror.
Chevengur is a revolutionary novel about revolutionary ardor and despair. Zakhar Pavlovich comes from a world of traditional crafts to work as a train mechanic, motivated by his belief in the transformative power of industry. His adopted son, Sasha Dvanov, embraces revolution, which will transform everything: the words we speak and the lives we live, souls and bodies, the soil underfoot and the sun overhead. Seeking communism, Dvanov joins up with Stepan Kopionkin, a warrior for the cause whose steed is the fearsome cart horse Strength of the Proletariat. Together they cross the steppe, encountering counterrevolutionaries, desperados, and visionaries of all kinds. At last they reach the isolated town of Chevengur. There communism is believed to have been achieved because everything that is not communism has been eliminated. And yet even in Chevengur the revolution recedes from sight. Comic, ironic, grotesque, disturbingly poetic in its use of language, and profoundly sorrowful, Chevengur--here published in a new English translation based on the most authoritative Russian text--is the most ambitious of the extraordinary novels that the great Andrey Platonov wrote in the 1920s and 1930s, when Soviet Russia was moving from revolutionary euphoria to state terror.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1681377683
ISBN13:9781681377681
Release Date:January 2024
Publisher:New York Review of Books
Length:592 Pages
Weight:1.35 lbs.
Dimensions:1.4" x 5.0" x 7.9"
Customer Reviews
0 rating
Copyright © 2025 Thriftbooks.com
Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information | Cookie Policy | Cookie Preferences | Accessibility Statement
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
