Synopses & Reviews
Translated from the Russian by Robert & Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson
With notes and an afterword by Robert Chandler and Olga Meerson
In Andrey Platonovs The Foundation Pit, a team of workers has been given the job of digging the foundation of an immense edifice, a palatial home for the perfect future that, they are convinced, is at hand. But the harder the team works, the deeper they dig, the more things go wrong, and it becomes clear that what is being dug is not a foundation but an immense grave.
The Foundation Pit is Platonovs most overtly political book, written in direct response to the staggering brutalities of Stalins collectivization of Russian agriculture. It is also a literary masterpiece. Seeking to evoke unspeakable realities, Platonov deforms and transforms language in pages that echo both with the alienating doublespeak of power and the stark simplicity of prayer.
This English translation is the first and only one to be based on the definitive edition published by Pushkin House in Moscow. It includes extensive notes and, in an appendix, several striking passages deleted by Platonov. Robert Chandler and Olga Meersons afterword discusses the historical context and style of Platonovs most haunted and troubling work.
Synopsis
In Andrey Platonov's The Foundation Pit, a team of workers has been given the job of digging the foundation of an immense edifice, a palatial home for the perfect future that, they are convinced, is at hand. But the harder the team works, the deeper they dig, the more things go wrong, and it becomes clear that what is being dug is not a foundation but an immense grave.
The Foundation Pit is Platonov's most overtly political book, one written in direct response to the staggering brutalities of Stalinist collectivization. It is also a literary masterpiece. Like Kafka--perhaps the only twentieth-century writer to whom he can be usefully compared--Platonov finds a new way of writing, a new approach to language that recasts the terrifying realities of modernity in a deeply disturbing, yet strangely spiritual light.
Robert Chandler's new translation of The Foundation Pit is the first to reflect the recent definitive text of the work as established by Pushkin House in Moscow. For the first time, readers of English have full access to one of the major works of modern Russian literature.
About the Author
Andrey Platonov (1899—1951) was born in a village near the Russian town of Voronezh. He began to publish poems and stories in the 1920s and worked as a land reclamation expert in central Russia, where he was a witness to the ravages of the Great Famine. In the 1930s Platonov fell into disfavor with the Soviet government and his writing disappeared from sight. NYRB Classics published a new translation of
Soul and Other Stories in 2007.
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Robert Chandler has translated selections of Sappho and Apollinaire and is the editor of Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida. His translations from Russian include Pushkin's Dubrovsky and The Captains Daughter, Leskov's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Vasily Grossmans Life and Fate and Hamid Ismailovs The Railway. His co-translations of Andrey Platonov have won prizes in the UK and the US. His Alexander Pushkin is published by Hesperus in their series of ‘Brief Lives. He teaches part time at Queen Mary, University of London.
Elizabeth Chandler is a co-translator of several volumes of Platonov and of Pushkins The Captains Daughter.
Olga Meerson teaches at Georgetown University and is the author of Dostoevskys Taboos (in English) and Platonov's Poetic of Re-Familiarization (in Russian). She is a co-translator of Platonovs Soul and Other Stories, which, in 2004, was awarded the AATSEEL prize for "best translation from a Slavonic language".