Chevengur

'Platonov is an extraordinary writer, perhaps the most brilliant Russian writer of the twentieth century' New York Review of Books

Chevengur is the story of a craftsman who wanders around the U.S.S.R. hoping to ease human misery with his inventions.

The Soviet Don Quixote, it is considered one of the most important novels of the Soviet era. This is the first full version to be made available in English.

Zakhar Pavlovich, a gifted craftsman, moves from traditional village life to the world of industry. He falls in love with steam locomotives; he wishes to harness the power of machines to bring an end to human misery, and yet before long he is disillusioned.

His adopted son, Sasha Dvanov, sets out across the steppes in pursuit of revolution, together with his companion, Kopionkin, a knight errant of the martyred revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. Perhaps communism will be born spontaneously of human yearning?

In the fictional town of Chevengur, a group of impatient Bolsheviks are liquidating the bourgeoisie and the half-bourgeoisie, and relocating all the buildings. They are hoping to bring about communism, spontaneously.

Chevengur is a philosophical novel that is also rich in psychological, social, and sensuous detail. Although it was never publishable in the USSR, it now stands as one of the most celebrated of Soviet novels, and along with The Foundation Pit, it is the most ambitious and moving of Andrey Platonov's efforts to take the measure of a world undergoing revolutionary transformation.

Translated by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler