The Blumkin Project
A Biographical Novel
Published on 27. September 2022
352 pages
978-1-63542-997-8 (ISBN)
Description
This page-turning biography follows the footsteps of a forgotten legend of the Russian Revolution.
Yakov Blumkin claimed to have had nine lives. He was a terrorist, the assassin of the German ambassador Wilhelm von Mirbach, a poet close to the avant-garde, a member of Cheka, a military strategist, a secret agent, and Leon Trotsky's secretary. Executed in 1929 on the orders of Stalin at the age of twenty-nine, he has continued to inspire a powerful curiosity: Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian Internet users have been adopting "Blumkin" as a pseudonym, and wild rumors and falsehoods about his extraordinary life abound today.
With a trove of manuscripts, documents, rare photographs, and personal souvenirs, writer and researcher Christian Salmon sets out to reconstruct the shadowy past of this multifaceted figure.
Yakov Blumkin claimed to have had nine lives. He was a terrorist, the assassin of the German ambassador Wilhelm von Mirbach, a poet close to the avant-garde, a member of Cheka, a military strategist, a secret agent, and Leon Trotsky's secretary. Executed in 1929 on the orders of Stalin at the age of twenty-nine, he has continued to inspire a powerful curiosity: Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian Internet users have been adopting "Blumkin" as a pseudonym, and wild rumors and falsehoods about his extraordinary life abound today.
With a trove of manuscripts, documents, rare photographs, and personal souvenirs, writer and researcher Christian Salmon sets out to reconstruct the shadowy past of this multifaceted figure.
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09/2022
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Persons
Christian Salmon is a writer and researcher at France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). He founded and was a member of the International Parliament of Writers from 1993 to 2003. He is the author of several books, including Verbicide, Devenir minoritaire: Pour une nouvelle politique de la littérature (coauthored with Joseph Hanimann), and Tombeau de la fiction.
William Rodarmor has translated some forty-five books and screenplays in genres ranging from literary fiction to espionage and fantasy. In 2017 he won the Northern California Book Award for fiction translation for The Slow Waltz of Turtles by Katherine Pancol. His recent translations include And Their Children After Them by Nicolas Mathieu (2020) and Article 353 by Tanguy Viel (2019).
William Rodarmor has translated some forty-five books and screenplays in genres ranging from literary fiction to espionage and fantasy. In 2017 he won the Northern California Book Award for fiction translation for The Slow Waltz of Turtles by Katherine Pancol. His recent translations include And Their Children After Them by Nicolas Mathieu (2020) and Article 353 by Tanguy Viel (2019).
