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The Foundation Pit (Paperback)

by Andrey Platonov (Author), Robert Chandler (Author), Geoffrey Smith (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
RRP: £12.00
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Customers buy this book with Companion to Andrei Platonov's "The Foundation Pit" by Thomas Seifrid

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Product details

  • Paperback: 192 pages
  • Publisher: The Harvill Press; New edition edition (9 May 1996)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 186046050X
  • ISBN-13: 978-1860460500
  • Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.6 x 1.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 382,136 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Geoffrey Hosking, Times Literary Supplement, Dec. 6, 1996

Certainly among the half-dozen or so most important works of fiction of the entire Soviet period.


Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times

Another Russian classic of passionate subversion, in a dazzling tradition that stretches from Gogol to Bulgakov
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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The finest of the anti-utopian fables written this century, 2 Jun 1999
By A Customer
Platonov is now seen by many Russians as their greatest prose-writer of the century. Certainly no one in Russia has used language more creatively. If he does not yet enjoy the reputation he deserves in the West, it is simply because he is extraordinarily difficult to translate.

In some ways this novel anticipates the work of Samuel Beckett. Eileen Battersby has referred to it in The Irish Times as 'a classic of passionate subversion'. 'Far more subtle than either Zamyatin's 'We' of Orwell's '1984', 'The Foundation Pit' is extraordinary: strange, almost abrupt, a hallucinatory, nightmarish parable of hysterical laughter and terrifying silences.'

No one who wishes to understand what has happened in Russia this century can afford not to read this novel.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars This text has now been RETRANSLATED!, 18 May 2009
By R. H. Chandler (London England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
If you are feeling frustrated that this volume is now hard to obtain, I suggest that you turn instead to our recent NYRB CLassics edition of THE FOUNDATION PIT. I myself have translated this book twice - in 1994 for The Harvill Press, and in 2009, in collaboration with my wife Elizabeth and the American scholar Olga Meerson, for NYRB Classics. I wanted to retranslate 'The Foundation Pit' for two reasons. First, the original text was never published in Platonov's lifetime, and the first posthumous publications - on which our Harvill translation was based - are now known to have been severely bowdlerized. Our NYRB version is the only English translation of Platonov's definitive text. Second, Platonov is very hard to translate. In the early 1990s I was working in the dark. During the last 15 years, however, I have been regularly attending Platonov seminars and conferences in Moscow and Petersburg. One indication of how deeply many Russian writers and critics admire Platonov is the extent of their generosity to his translators; I now have a large list of people I can turn to for help. Above all, I have the good fortune to have as my closest collaborators - my wife, who shares my love of Platonov - and the brilliant American scholar, Olga Meerson. Olga was brought up in the Soviet Union, she was once a fine violinist, she has a profound knowledge of Russian Orthodoxy, and she has written an excellent book about Platonov. She has deepened my understanding of almost every sentence of 'Soul' and 'The Foundation Pit'. Platonov, by the way, is a wonderful writer. No other work of literature means so much to me that I have wanted to translate it TWICE!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Kulaks And All, 28 May 2009
This review is from: The Foundation Pit (European Classics) (Paperback)
It's unnerving how phrases, words, propaganda, rhetoric can drive emotions and evoke the most mendacious control over erstwhile sensible people. The Foundation Pit casts a sly eye on the pompous, self-righteousness that characterized socialism in Stalin's Russia. A time when you were better off without "thoughts and moods" and where decrees proclaimed for "our future" celebrated collectivization and total extermination of the kulak vermin. Platonov's telling is neither polished nor uplifting but nonetheless reveals the reality of a life that leaves you feeling worthless and powerlesss and escape comes only with death.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars A scathing classic from Stalinist times
Andrey Platonov (real name: A.P. Klimentov) is one of the least well-known of the "silver era" of Russian/Soviet writers. Read more
Published 6 months ago by M. A. Krul

4.0 out of 5 stars Unrelentingly grim and haunting
A grim slice of Soviet reality during collectivisation. Not for the general reader, as one must be aware of this political background and the political and socio-cultural... Read more
Published on 21 Oct 2007 by John Hopper

3.0 out of 5 stars a curiosity
as a lover of all things russian i was disapointed in this book. it is not that great. Read more
Published on 26 April 2007 by Andrew Ferguson

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