{"title":"Iuril Dombrovskii","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"faculty-of-useless-knowledge-book-iuril-dombrovskii-9781860460531","title":"The Faculty of Useless Knowledge","description":"Set in the Year of Terror, 1937, in the Central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan, this novel concerns a group of archaeologists who find themselves caught up in an ambitious Cheka investigator's attempt to set up a show trial in Alma-Ata to rival those taking place in Moscow.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49599590498577,"sku":"GOR003274030","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49664935919889,"sku":"GOR011189955","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51423120883985,"sku":"CIN1860460534G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1860460534.jpg?v=1751313708"},{"product_id":"faculty-of-useless-knowledge-book-iuril-dombrovskii-9781860460548","title":"The Faculty of Useless Knowledge","description":"On a sunny day in the mountains of Kazakhstan in 1937, the year that became known in Russia as the Year of Terror, a group of archaeologists stare in wonder at fragments of a gold diadem, the chance find of local fishermen. On the same day the love of chief archaeologist Georgi Zybin's life rings him after a three year silence; Fathr Andrey puts the finishing touches to a treatise on the trial of Christ; Vladimir Kornilov, Zybin's assistant, puts two bottles of champagne to cool in a mountain stream; while down in the ancient city of Alma-Ata, ambitious NKVD officer Yokov Neiman dreams of a show trial to rival those taking place in Moscow...For all of them life is about to change utterly. The disappearance of the witnesses and the gold gives Neiman his opportunity: he arrests Zybin as the linchpin in a conspiracy to sabotage the work of the museum and steal Soviet property. Now the interrogation can begin. A nightmarish Kafkaesque comedy; the tragedy of Russia under Stalin; the romance of a man beloved; a duel between Soviet expediency and humanist values (The Faculty of Useless Knowledge of the title); an apocryphal retelling of the passion; a deadly serious debate about the nature of justice - Dombrovky's masterpiece is all these things, but above all it is a subtle and complex novel, packed with characters as unpredictable as life itself.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50254167900433,"sku":"GOR002325240","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53022821384465,"sku":"GOR002844181","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1860460542.jpg?v=1751412781"},{"product_id":"faculty-of-useless-knowledge-book-iuril-dombrovskii-9781860463433","title":"The Faculty of Useless Knowledge","description":"Set in the Year of Terror, 1937, in Kazakhstan, this novel concerns a group of archaeologists who find themseleves caught up in an ambitious Cheka investigator's attempt to set up a show trial in Alma-Ata to rival those taking place in Moscow. Zybin, a young student, faces interrogation in a cell.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50392648286481,"sku":"CIN1860463436A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50392650809617,"sku":"CIN1860463436G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51797508161809,"sku":"GOR002485884","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1860463436.jpg?v=1750964261"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-iuril-dombrovskii.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}