A review by juperez
The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

4.0

‘The Letter Killers Club’ was my heady and fantastical introduction to the work of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (try saying that one fast three times). It centers around a group of storytellers who refuse to put their words on to paper (for they fear that the world of literature and words cramps people’s heads with every idea but their own) and elect to have weekly meetings where they allow their own original ‘themes’ to flourish. The stories that follow are outrageous fables that range from a rehashing of Hamlet to an imagined dystopia run by machines. This slim book was full of ideas (some flew over my head, I’m sure), darkly comic and morbid, too.

Krzhizhanovsky reads like the Bolaño of Stalinist Russia and I’m all about it.