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The Letter Killers Club

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( 1,035 ratings, 130 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky delves into the peculiar world of a secret society of novelists who reject the written word, sharing tales only through oral storytelling. Set in post-revolutionary Russia, the book explores themes of creativity, identity, and the philosophical dilemmas of capturing ideas in text. Its intriguing narrative structure challenges the conventional boundaries between imagination and reality.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

You might enjoy this book if you have a fascination for thought-provoking narratives and metafictional storytelling. It delves into the lives of a secretive club where members create stories that exist only in their imaginations, blending reality and fantasy in a captivating manner. Fans of philosophical musings and experimental fiction will likely find its unique narrative style and rich thematic exploration intriguing.

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The Letter Killers Club

The 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.

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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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