Петербург [Petersbourg]. Роман в 8 гл. с прологом и эпилогом [Roman en huit chapitres avec un prologue et un épilogue]

Written between 1910 and 1913, and published in 1916, Petersburg is an unclassifiable book. At most, one can say it is a delirious, absurd epic, at times bordering on the carnivalesque, and above all richly imagistic. Petersburg here marks the end of one world and the possible birth of another, drawn out of the fog of the most fantastical and terror-ridden city of its time, on the eve of the October Revolution. The novel follows the twenty-four hours of waiting before a terrorist act entrusted by the Party to Nikolai, the very son of the intended victim, Senator Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, by means of a bomb concealed in a bundle. For its translator, Georges Nivat (1967), it is madness that unifies the novel: “This book has a singular unity: the compact unity of nightmares, the unassailable logic of delirium. At the source of this delirium, catalyzing all the morbid fantasies of a soul, we find a city, or rather a mirage of a city: Petersburg.” The work was praised by Mandelstam and Nabokov, who, in his personal pantheon, placed it immediately after Joyce and Kafka, as “one of the four most important works of twentieth century literature.”

A fine copy in a contemporary binding.