Red Pyramid
Selected Stories
Published on 27. February 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
320 pages
978-1-68137-820-6 (ISBN)
Description
"Provocative, hilarious, and tender stories about sex, violence, politics from one of the greatest Russian writers of the post-Soviet era. Red Pyramid is a sort of "greatest hits" collection of short stories from across Vladimir Sorokin's career, beginning with juvenilia like "The Pink Tuber," composed with no expectation of either publication or readership; moving on to scatological conceptual texts like "An Obelisk"; then plunging into the more even-tempered, but still quite uncanny, delights of his post-Soviet work. Stories like "A Month in Dachau" earn Sorokin his moniker as the "Russian De Sade," while others, like "Timka," are shockingly tender-despite their graphic depictions of mass shootings and anal sex. This collection also contains the infamous "Nastya," a story about a family cannibalizing its daughter on the eve of the twentieth century, for which Sorokin was nearly put on trial; "Horse Soup," which was the first translation from the Russian to win an O'Henry Prize; as well as stories published in Anglophone magazines such as The New Yorker, n+1, Harper's, and The Baffler to great acclaim. Translated by Max Lawton with equal attention to chewiness and pop flair, Red Pyramid is introduced brilliantly, brutally, and as always, unexpectedly by Will Self. Red Pyramid is perhaps the best place to begin a dive into Sorokin's arch detonation of Russian violence"--
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
New York Review Books
Dimensions
Height: 202 mm
Width: 126 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
324 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-68137-820-6 (9781681378206)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
02/2024
NYRB Classics
€17.49
Available for download
Persons
Vladimir Sorokin was born in a small town outside of Moscow in 1955. He trained as an engineer at the Moscow Institute of Oil and Gas but turned to art and writing, becoming a major presence in the Moscow underground of the 1980s. His work was banned in the Soviet Union, and his first novel, The Queue, was published by the famed émigré dissident Andrei Sinyavsky in France in 1985. In 1992, Sorokin’s Their Four Hearts was short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize; in 1999, the publication of Blue Lard led to public demonstrations against the book and demands that Sorokin be prosecuted as a pornographer; in 2001, he received the Andrei Bely Award for outstanding contributions to Russian literature. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. Sorokin is also the author of the screenplays for Moscow, The Kopeck, and 4, and of the libretto for Leonid Desyatnikov’s The Children of Rosenthal, the first new opera to be commissioned by the Bolshoi Theater since the 1970s. His most recent novel is Inheritance. He lives in Berlin.
Max Lawton is a novelist, musician, and translator. He has translated several works by Vladimir Sorokin, including the NYRB Classics edition of Telluria. He lives in Los Angeles.
Will Self is a journalist, columnist, and author of more than two dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, including eleven novels. His most recent book is the collection Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021. He lives in the UK.
Max Lawton is a novelist, musician, and translator. He has translated several works by Vladimir Sorokin, including the NYRB Classics edition of Telluria. He lives in Los Angeles.
Will Self is a journalist, columnist, and author of more than two dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, including eleven novels. His most recent book is the collection Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021. He lives in the UK.