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Man and His Surroundings is a collection of novellas that are unconnected by one plot, but which altogether constitute a piercing examination of Soviet and post-Soviet culture. The novellas are hilarious and poignant, satirical and philosophical, and they impart a better intuitive understanding of the Soviet cultural heritage and mindset.
List of contents
Translator¿s Introduction
Instead of a Foreword
1. Lenin at the Amra
2. The Rapier
3. The Hunting Hawk
4. The Beauty of Norms, or a Boy Waits for a Man
5. The Light of the Twilight Youth
6. A Sea of Charisma
7. PalermöNew York
8. The Old Men¿s Bender on the Sea
9. Lenin and Uncle Sandro
About the author
Fazil Iskander (1920 - 2016) was raised in Abkhazia but settled permanently in Moscow after graduating from the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow in 1954. Iskander¿s major works include the satirical novel
Sozvezdiye kozlotura (1966;
The Goatibex Constellation) and the allegorical dystopia
Kroliki i udavy (1982;
Rabbits and Boa Constrictors). Iskander spent decades writing the epic novel
Sandro iz Chegema (
Sandro of Chegem), which chronicles the collision of Soviet values with Abkhazian patriarchal life.
Alexander Rojavin is a multilingual intelligence, media, and policy analyst specializing in information warfare. He is currently editing a book on modern Russian cinema as a key battlefield in the Kremlin¿s information war (forthcoming Routledge). At the same time, literary translation has always been one of his first loves.
Summary
Man and His Surroundings irreverently explores Soviet and post-Soviet identity, politics, and history. In what Iskander himself calls the book’s seminal novella, the narrator meets a man who believes himself to be Lenin, thawed out after decades of cryogenic storage. The narrator endures a phantasmagorical account of what “Lenin” thought and did during the October Revolution of 1917 and how another revolution is imminent. In another novella, the narrator tells of a nationally renowned fencer as the fencer sits at a neighboring table, discussing the impossibility of equality on earth, while his son pesters him for ice cream. The novellas enrapture the reader with their humor and impart a better intuitive understanding of the Soviet cultural heritage and mindset.
