Short stories
Голубая книга
Not translated into English
Mikhail Zoshchenko · 1935
Synopsis
The book is divided into five parts: Money, Love, Perfidy, Failures and Remarkable Events. Each opens with an introduction by the author and mixes anecdotes drawn from world history, in which Mark Antony, Louis XIV, Menshikov or Kropotkin appear, with short comic stories of ordinary Soviet life. The narrator, a naive amateur, holds his era to be the most advanced in humanity's history and tells of the great figures of history in the same tone as his neighbours.
Context
The book is dedicated to Maxim Gorky, who had suggested that the author write a humorous history of culture. Most of the stories in the contemporary part had been written earlier and were thoroughly reworked for the collection, where they take on a new meaning. The text appeared in instalments in the journal Krasnaya nov, from 1934 to 1935, then in volume form in Leningrad, from the publisher Sovetski pissatel, in 1935.
Who it is for
A collection of brief, comic stories, organised in five parts, which can be read part by part.
Prizes and reception
The Larousse ranks it among the major works of its author, alongside his stories of the 1920s.
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