Angels on the head of a pin : a novel / Yuri Druzhnikov ; translated from the Russian by Thomas Moore.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Druzhnikov, I︠U︡riĭ, 1933-2008.

Contributor:

• Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

• UNESCO collection of representative works

Standardized Title:

• Angely na konchike igly. English

Language:

• English
• Russian

Genre:

• Fiction.

Penn Provenance:

• Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

566 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

London ; Chester Springs, PA : Peter Owen ; Paris : UNESCO ; Chester Springs, PA : Distributed in the USA by Dufour Editions, 2002.

Summary:

Originally published in Russia in 1979, this overlooked masterpiece of Russian literature sold a quarter of a million copies in its first edition and has been named one of the ten best Russian novels of the twentieth century, and one of the best contemporary novels by Unesco. Angels on the Head of a Pin is set in Moscow in the late 1960s, at a time when Khrushchev-era liberalization is being threatened by the return to personality cult and repression following the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia. It will be thirty-five years this August since Prague Spring, when the Soviet invasion took place, and this novel reveals much about how it was manipulated and what happened after. The editor-in-chief of the organ of the Communist Party collapses with a heart attack outside the Central Committee building. This is partly brought on by the appearance of a samizdat manuscript on his desk that leads to his anguishing over who left it there and what to do with it to avoid falling victim to the malevolence its content is likely to unleash. The solution lies with Yakov Rappoport, an aging and cynical Jewish veteran of the war and two spells in the Gulag, the author of not only the obnoxious popular campaigns sponsored by the newspaper (and all its letters to the editor) but of every speech that gets made in public by the principals of the regime as well. His efforts to help his stricken editor, as well as the novel's star-crossed lovers, lead to a hallucinatory climax.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

ISBN:

• 0720611709
• 9231038370

OCLC:

52475214