{"title":"Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the surreal and philosophical short stories of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. A unique voice from Soviet Russia, his work blends fantasy, satire, and profound questions about reality. Start your exploration here.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"letter-killers-club-book-sigizmund-krzhizhanovsky-9781590174500","title":"The Letter Killers Club","description":"A New York Review Books Original\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Letter Killers Club\u003c\/i\u003e is a secret society of self-described \"conceivers\" who, to preserve the purity of their conceptions, will commit nothing to paper. (What, after all, is your run-of-the-mill scribbler of stories if not an accomplished corruptor of conceptions?) The logic of the club is strict and uncompromising. Every Saturday, members meet in a firelit room filled with empty black bookshelves where they strive to top one another by developing ever unlikelier, ever more perfect conceptions- a rehearsal of Hamlet hijacked by an actor who vanishes with the role; the double life of a merry medieval cleric derailed by a costume change; a machine-run world that imprisons men's minds while conscripting their bodies; a dead Roman scribe stranded this side of the River Acheron. But in this book set in an ominous Soviet Moscow of the 1920s, the members of the club are strangely mistrustful of one another, while all are under the spell of its despotic President, and there is no telling, in the end, just how lethal the purely conceptual-or, for that matter, letters-may be.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49555808583953,"sku":"GOR013600671","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49734422266129,"sku":"NGR9781590174500","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50001632723217,"sku":"GOR011298862","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50024113996049,"sku":"GOR003445814","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50153750888721,"sku":"GOR007517263","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50796889342225,"sku":"CIN159017450XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51423256543505,"sku":"CIN159017450XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52520644215057,"sku":"NIN9781590174500","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/159017450X.jpg?v=1750799278"},{"product_id":"seven-stories-book-sigizmund-krzhizhanovsky-9785717200738","title":"Seven Stories","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49620473839889,"sku":"GOR003016393","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50261775450385,"sku":"GOR013902050","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50398168121617,"sku":"CIN5717200730VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/5717200730.jpg?v=1750904102"},{"product_id":"autobiography-of-a-corpse-book-sigizmund-krzhizhanovsky-9781590176702","title":"Autobiography of a Corpse","description":"An NYRB Classics Original\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Winner of the 2014 PEN Translation Prize\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Winner of the 2014 Read Russia Prize\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The stakes are wildly high in Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's fantastic and blackly comic philosophical fables, which abound in nested narratives and wild paradoxes. This new collection of eleven mind-bending and spellbinding tales includes some of Krzhizhanovsky's most dazzling conceits- a provincial journalist who moves to Moscow finds his existence consumed by the autobiography of his room's previous occupant; the fingers of a celebrated pianist's right hand run away to spend a night alone on the city streets; a man's lifelong quest to bite his own elbow inspires both a hugely popular circus act and a new refutation of Kant. Ordinary reality cracks open before our eyes in the pages of \u003ci\u003eAutobiography of a Corpse\u003c\/i\u003e, and the extraordinary spills out.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49734994428177,"sku":"NGR9781590176702","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49778279416081,"sku":"CIN1590176707G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50024122089745,"sku":"GOR007586516","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50105909870865,"sku":"CIN1590176707VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51037981868305,"sku":"NIN9781590176702","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53246091493649,"sku":"GOR005337118","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1590176707.jpg?v=1750799282"},{"product_id":"stravaging-strange-book-joanne-turnbull-9780231199476","title":"Stravaging Strange","description":"This book presents three tales that encapsulate Sigizmund Krzhizhanovskys gift for creating philosophical, satirical, and lyrical phantasmagorias. It also includes excerpts from his notebooksaphoristic glimpses of his worldview, moods, humor, and writing methodsand reminiscences of Krzhizhanovsky by his lifelong companion, Anna Bovshek.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50032485695761,"sku":"GOR012955172","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50347057840401,"sku":"CIN0231199473G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51000502419729,"sku":"NIN9780231199476","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231199473.jpg?v=1750780186"},{"product_id":"that-third-guy-book-sigizmund-krzhizhanovsky-9780299317102","title":"That Third Guy","description":"This collection of theater writings by the Russian modernist Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky brings his powerful, wildly imaginative vision of theater to an English-language audience for the first time. The centerpiece is his play That Third Guy (1937), a farce written at the onset of the Stalinist Terror and never performed. Its plot builds on Alexander Pushkin's poem Cleopatra, while parodying the themes of Eros and empire in the Cleopatra tales of two writers Krzhizhanovsky adored: Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw. In a chilling echo of the Soviet 1930s, Rome here is a police state, and the Third Guy (a very bad poet) finds himself in its dragnet. As he scrambles to escape his fate, the end of the Roman Republic thunders on offstage.  The volume also features selections from Krzhizhanovsky's compelling and idiosyncratic essays on Shakespeare, Pushkin, Shaw, and the philosophy of theater. Professionally, he worked with director Alexander Tairov at the Moscow Kamerny Theater, and his original philosophy of the stage bears comparison with the great theater theorists of the twentieth century. 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