Collected Works

by Andrei Platonov, Anthony Olcott (Translator), Marion Jordon (Translator)

The Barrel Organ (full-length satirical play), The Foundation Pit (complete novel), The Epifan Locks and nine other short stories. Andrei Platonov (1899-1951) produced a great body of work, including fiction, plays poetry, essays, and scenarios. The chasm between the ideals of the "new men" and the reality of provincial life is one of Platonov's main themes. The Party boss who is blind to suffering and real prbolems is one of his favorit evillains. His favorite heroes are working men - laborers, mechanics, craftsmen - who have intimate relations with both nature and machines. Usually because of supervisors who misuse both machines and men, the heroes come to unhappy ends.

438 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Andrei Platonov, August 28, 1899 – January 5, 1951, was the pen name of Andrei Platonovich Klimentov, a Soviet author whose works anticipate existentialism. Although Platonov was a Communist, his works were banned in his own lifetime for their skeptical attitude toward collectivization and other Stalinist policies.

From 1918 through 1921, his most intensive period as a writer, he published dozens of poems (an anthology appeared in 1922), several stories, and hundreds of articles and essays, adopting in 1920 the Platonov pen-name by which he is best-known. With remarkably high energy and intellectual precocity he wrote confidently across a wide range of topics including literature, art, cultural life, science, philosophy, religion, education, politics, the civil war, foreign relations, economics, technology, famine, and land reclamation, amongst others.

His famous works include the novels The Foundation Pit and Chevengur.

Reviews

[Madeleine · Rating 5 out of 5]

While some “glass half empty” folks might go on and on about Stalin’s purges, and famines and grain requisitions and the general horrors of living under the rule of a moustached lunatic, other more optimistic individuals might say, “Well, if there wasn’t a ridiculously paranoid and brutal leader, we wouldn’t have books making fun of this ridiculously paranoid and brutal leader!” Note: this previous statement could be called “bad logic” or, more simply, “stupid,” for it is both. So, really all I need to say is that Andrei Platonov wrote a play about a Communist party leader trying to address food shortages by inventing a new food made from bird feces, grass, and sawdust. One character says to another, “Also, Ignat Nikanorovich, the flock of birds has let loose a lot of birdshit. Whole mounds of it are lying round and they say it’s a real goldmine. What should I do, store it, or let it go?” Much hilarity, and much vomiting after a misguided “taste test” ensues. You’ll never look at bird droppings the same way again.

[Yasmeen abdulhak]

his works seems more like i am reading the news
it feels like he has been torn away from being a journalist to being a writter