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The Letter Killers Club
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Check link for latest rating. ( 1,035 ratings, 130 reviews)
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The Letter Killers Club
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See moreThe logic of the Letter Killers Club, a secret society of "conceivers" who commit nothing to paper on principle, is strict and uncompromising.
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
A New York Review Books Original.
Writers are professional killers of conceptions. The logic of the Letter Killers Club, a secret society of "conceivers" who commit nothing to paper on principle, is strict and uncompromising. Every Saturday, they meet in a fire-lit room hung with blank black bookshelves to present their "pure and unsubstantiated" conceptions: a rehearsal of Hamlet hijacked by an actor who vanishes with the role; the double life of a medieval merry cleric derailed by a costume change; a machine-run world that imprisons men's minds while conscripting their bodies; a dead Roman scribe stranded this side of the River Acheron.
The overarching scene of this short novel is set in Soviet Moscow, in the ominous 1920s. Known only by pseudonym, like Chesterton's anarchists in fin-de-siècle London, the Letter Killers are as mistrustful of one another as they are mesmerised by their despotic president.
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky is at his philosophical and fantastical best in this extended meditation on madness and silence, the word and the soul unbound.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
The Letter Killers Club is praised for its quirky and exploratory nature. The translation by Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai Formozov is particularly noted for capturing the philosophical, occasionally folksy, and profoundly poetic essence of Krzhizhanovsky's prose.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781590174500
Publisher: New York Review Books
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 06 December 2011
Country: United States
Imprint: NYRB Classics
Edition: Main
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 10.0mm
Width: 126.0mm
Height: 202.0mm
Weight: 169g
Pages: 144
About the Author
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (1887-1950) was an ethnically Polish Ukrainian-born short-story writer whose work was largely unpublished, though he was active among Moscow's literati in the 1920s. He died in Moscow but his burial site is unknown. Joanne Turnbull has translated a number of books from Russian, including Andrei Sinyavsky's Soviet Civilization and Ivan the Fool, Asar Eppel's The Grassy Street, and Andrei Sergeyev's Stamp Album. She lives in Moscow. Caryl Emerson is A. Watson Armour III Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University.
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