Man and His Surroundings / / Fazil Iskander, Fazil Iskander.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Academic Studies Press Complete eBook-Package 2023
• VerfasserIn: Iskander, Fazil,
• MitwirkendeR: Rojavin, Alexander,
• Place / Publishing House: Boston, MA : : Academic Studies Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (324 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- 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 Palermo—New York -- 8 The Old Men’s Bender on the Sea -- 9 Lenin and Uncle Sandro -- About the Translator