A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL
"Krzhizhanovsky is a poker-faced surrealist whose imagination is so radical it goes beyond political lampoon into the realms of metaphysical assault. His writing is in the fantastical modernist mode of Jorge Luis Borges and Stanislaw Lem-he works out the eccentric premises of his plot with a relentless cogency."
- BILL MARX, WBUR
Written in Soviet Moscow in the 19205-but considered too subversive even to show to a publisher-the seven tales included here attest to Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's boundless imagination, black humor, and breathtaking irony: a man loses his way in the vast black waste of his own small room; the Eiffel Tower runs amok; a kind soul dreams of selling "everything you need for suicide"; an absentminded passenger boards the wrong train, winding up in a place where night is day, nightmares are the reality, and the backs of all facts have been broken; a man out looking for work comes across a line for logic but doesn't join it as there's no guarantee the logic will last; a sociable corpse misses his own funeral; an inventor gets a glimpse of the far-from-radiant communist future.
"Delightful to read, humorous, sad and meaningful... the flavor and personality of Krzhizhanovsky's writing is all his own."
- JOHN BAYLEY, THE SPECTATOR
"Nightmarish visions and philosophical conundrums explored in highly entertaining, fleet-footed prose."
- OLIVER READY, THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
"We are lucky that Krzhizhanovsky's work has survived.
... It is now clear that he is one of the greatest Russian writers of the last century."
- ROBERT CHANDLER, FINANCIAL TIMES
Cover photograph: Benjamin Stone, the interior of the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament, 1897
Cover design: Katy Homans