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A review by oleksandr
Unwitting Street by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
3.0
This is a collection of novellas (actually short stories in terms of length if one applies say Hugo award criteria) of Soviet writer [a:Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky|3175914|Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1293726995p2/3175914.jpg]. He was almost unknown during his life (1887–1950), because censors found his works too strange to publish (even despite there is no openly anti-communist propaganda or some such), so his prose was first published as a separate book only in 1989. Now he is considered one of the lost classics. He has a strange, chimeric/phantasmagorical style, which on one hand reminds of [a:Franz Kafka|5223|Franz Kafka|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1569196898p2/5223.jpg] and on other – of [a:Nikolai Gogol|232932|Nikolai Gogol|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1303965602p2/232932.jpg] and [a:Daniil Kharms|4152890|Daniil Kharms|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1280780809p2/4152890.jpg]. I read is as a part of monthly reading for December 2020 at Speculative Fiction in Translation group.
I actually read not this book, but the original stories in Russian from his Complete works, starting with this volume – [b:Собрание сочинений в 5 томах. Том 1|4256843|Собрание сочинений в 5 томах. Том 1|Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1234910754l/4256843._SY75_.jpg|4304303]. So, a first thing to note that this collection (which is the fifth of the author) actually combines works from different periods (and different volumes of the Collected Works). In a lot of his works at the beginning something strange happens: a fly is turned into an elephant; a god dies; a paper stops allowing any lies to be written on it, etc. and then we readers follow the way these accidents change the world. Another common (for him) trope is having inanimate objects (e.g. pants) or even abstractions (like plots o unwritten stories) behaving as people.
He is definitely an interesting imaginative writer and I’m glad I am now aware of him. I plan to read more of his works.
I actually read not this book, but the original stories in Russian from his Complete works, starting with this volume – [b:Собрание сочинений в 5 томах. Том 1|4256843|Собрание сочинений в 5 томах. Том 1|Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1234910754l/4256843._SY75_.jpg|4304303]. So, a first thing to note that this collection (which is the fifth of the author) actually combines works from different periods (and different volumes of the Collected Works). In a lot of his works at the beginning something strange happens: a fly is turned into an elephant; a god dies; a paper stops allowing any lies to be written on it, etc. and then we readers follow the way these accidents change the world. Another common (for him) trope is having inanimate objects (e.g. pants) or even abstractions (like plots o unwritten stories) behaving as people.
He is definitely an interesting imaginative writer and I’m glad I am now aware of him. I plan to read more of his works.