Book cover for Leningrad by Igor Vishnevetsky

Leningrad

Igor Vishnevetsky
2013 Released
150 Pages
1-2 Hours
Audiobook Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
Dalkey Archive PressISBN 9781564789389
Translated by Andrew Bromfield

Closing the gap between the contemporary Russian novel and the masterpieces of the early Soviet avant-garde, this masterful mixture of prose and poetry, excerpts from private letters and diaries, and quotes from newspapers and NKVD documents, is a unique amalgam of documentary, philosophical novel, and black humor. Revolving around three central characters—a composer; his lover, Vera; and Vera's husband, a naval officer intercepting enemy communications—we are made witness to the inhuman conditions prevailing during the Siege of Leningrad, against a background of starvation and continuous bombing. In their wild attempts to survive, the protagonists hold on to their art, ideals, and sentiments—hoping that these might somehow remain uncorrupted despite the Bolsheviks, Nazis, and even death itself.

Igor Vishnevetsky

Igor Vishnevetsky was born in 1964. In 1986 he graduated from the Faculty of Philology at Moscow State University, and in 1996 received a PhD in Slavic languages from Brown University in the United States. Vishnevetsky has authored six collections of poetry, two monographs-one on Andrei Bely, the other on the Russian emigre composers of the 1920s and 1930s-and a 700-page-long biography of Sergei Prokofiev. Vishnevetsky splits his time between the US and Russia.

Andrew Bromfield

Translated by

Andrew Bromfield is a translator of Russian literary and cultural texts with more than forty years of experience. His numerous translations range from Leo Tolstoy and Mikhail Bulgakov to more modern authors such as Boris Akunin, Victor Pelevin, and Mikhail Shishkin. He currently works out of Bethesda, Maryland.

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