A Companion to Andrei Platonov's the Foundation Pit

Written at the height of Stalin's first five-year plan for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit registers a dissonant mixture of utopian longings and despair. Furthermore, it provides essential background to Platonov's parody of the mainstream Soviet production novel, which is widely recognized as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian prose. In addition to an overview of the work's key themes, it discusses their place within Platonov's oeuvre as a whole, his troubled relations with literary officialdom, the work's ideological and political background, and key critical responses since the work's first publication in the West in 1973.

Author: Thomas Seifrid
Publisher: Academic Studies Press
Published: 04/01/2009
Pages: 204
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.64lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.43d
ISBN13: 9781934843574
ISBN10: 1934843571
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | Russian & Former Soviet Union
- History | Russia & the Former Soviet Union
- Literary Criticism | Books & Reading

About the Author
Thomas Seifrid (Ph.D. Cornell University,1984) is Professor of Slavic Studies, University of Southern California. Author of Andrei Platonov. Uncertainties of Spirit (Cambridge University Press, 1992), The Word Made Self: Russian Writings on Language, 1860-1930 (Cornell University Press, 2005), and numerous articles on Russian literature and culture.