In this essential collection of Andrei Platonov's plays, the noted Platonov translator Robert Chandler edits and introduces The Hurdy-Gurdy (translated by Susan Larsen), Fourteen Little Red Huts (translated by Chandler), and Grandmother's Little Hut (translated by Jesse Irwin). Written in 1930 and 1933, respectively, The Hurdy-Gurdy and Fourteen Little Red Huts constitute an impassioned and penetrating response to Stalin's assault on the Soviet peasantry. They reflect the political urgency of Bertolt Brecht and anticipate the tragic farce of Samuel Beckett but play out through dialogue and characterization that is unmistakably Russian. This volume also includes Grandmother's Little Hut, an unfinished play that represents Platonov's later, gentler work.

In this essential collection of Andrei Platonov's plays, the noted Platonov translator Robert Chandler edits and introduces The Hurdy-Gurdy (translated by Susan Larsen), Fourteen Little Red Huts (translated by Chandler), and Grandmother's Little Hut (translated by Jesse Irwin). Written in 1930 and 1933, respectively, The Hurdy-Gurdy and Fourteen Little Red Huts constitute an impassioned and penetrating response to Stalin's assault on the Soviet peasantry. They reflect the political urgency of Bertolt Brecht and anticipate the tragic farce of Samuel Beckett but play out through dialogue and characterization that is unmistakably Russian. This volume also includes Grandmother's Little Hut, an unfinished play that represents Platonov's later, gentler work.

This is a title in the Bristol Classical Press Russian Texts series, in Russian with English notes, vocabulary and introduction. The influence of Andrey Platonov (1899-1951), a gifted writer of the Soviet era, has pervaded Soviet and Russian literature since the 1950s. "The River Potudan" (1937), should introduce the student of Russian to the complex thought and ideas that writers like Platonov, despite the severity of the times, were able, and brave enough, to convey. This story concerns a soldier returning from war, who with the support of a community of friends and family, builds a new life in Communist Russia. Complex issues are at stake: the hero has been emasculated by his experience; not harmony, but disintegration and alienation are characteristic of the Soviet society presented.