Autobiography of a Corpse – Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

Softback

256 pages

New York Review Books

ISBN: 9781590176702

Virtually unpublished during his lifetime, the fantastic and blackly comic philosophical fables of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (1887–1950) have since 1989 earned him a reputation as one of the greatest Russian writers of the twentieth century. Included in this collection of eleven newly translated tales are some of his strangest and most brilliant conceits: a provincial journalist who moves to Moscow finds his existence consumed by the autobiography of his room''s previous occupant, a suicide who vacated his hundred square feet in exchange for his successor''s consideration of his manuscript; the fingers of a celebrated pianist s right hand run away to spend an abrasive night alone on the city streets.. Abounding in nested narratives, wild paradox, and improbably high stakes, the unlikely stories in ''Autobiography of a Corpse'' ask you to take a second look at the cracks in everyday reality.