The Three Fat Men by Yuri Olesha

The Three Fat Men by Yuri Olesha

Boasting a veritable menagerie of characters, including dancing instructors, pies, and talking parrots, and written in the Franco-Italian storytelling tradition, The Three Fat Men is considered an absolute endorsement of the Communist regime. Revolution is brewing outside the palace walls, and the three fat men who rule the land with an iron fist are getting fatter as the news gets worse. Led by the tightrope walker Tibul, the revolutionary forces, made up of ordinary citizens and the palace guard, embark on a mission to rescue Prospero the gunsmith from his imprisonment in the tyrants' zoo, and to save the life of brave young circus girl Suok, who has been unmasked from her disguise as the favorite doll of the childless men's heir, Tutti.

Yuri Olesha (1899-1960), the son of an impoverished land-owner who spent his days playing cards, grew up in Odessa, a lively multicultural city whose literary scene also included Isaac Babel. Olesha made his name as a writer with Three Fat Men, a proletarian fairy tale, and had an even greater success with Envyin 1927. Soon, however, the ambiguous nature of the novella's depiction of the new revolutionary era led to complaints from high, followed by the collapse of his career and the disappearance of his books. In 1934, Olesha addressed the First Congress of Soviet Writers, arguing that a writer should be allowed the freedom to choose his own style and themes. For the rest of his life he wrote very little. A memoir of his youth, No Day Without a Line, appeared posthumously.

Ken Kalfus's most recent book is a novel, The Commissariat of Enlightenment. He is also the author of two short story collections, Thirst and Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies.

Marian Schwartz has been translating Russian fiction and nonfiction for over thirty years. Her work includes Edvard Radzinsky's The Last Tsar, Yuri Olesha's Envy, and many works by Nina Berberova.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781843914525
ISBN 10	1843914522
Title	The Three Fat Men
Author	Yuri Olesha
Series	Modern Voices
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Hesperus Press Ltd
Year published	2011-03-25
Number of pages	156
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.