Trepanation of the Skull

Sergey Gandlevsky is widely recognized as one of the leading living Russian poets and prose writers. His autobiographical novella Trepanation of the Skull is a portrait of the artist as a young late-Soviet man. At the center of the narrative are Gandlevsky's brain tumor, surgery, and recovery in the early 1990s. The story radiates out, relaying the poet's personal history through 1994, including his unique perspective on the 1991 coup by Communist hardliners resisted by Boris Yeltsin. Gandlevsky tells wonderfully strange but true episodes from the bohemian life he and his literary companions led. He also frankly describes his epic alcoholism and his ambivalent adjustment to marriage and fatherhood.

Aside from its documentary interest, the book's appeal derives from its self-critical and shockingly honest narrator, who expresses himself in the densely stylized version of Moscow slang that was characteristic of the nonconformist intelligentsia of the 1970s and 1980s. Gandlevsky is a true artist of language who incorporates into his style the cadences of Pushkin and Tiutchev, the folk wisdom of proverbs, and slang in all its varieties. Susanne Fusso's excellent translation marks the first volume in English of Sergey Gandlevsky's prose, and it will interest scholars, students, and general readers of Russian literature and culture of the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods.

Sergey Gandlevsky is widely recognized as one of the most important living Russian poets and prose writers and has received numerous literary prizes.

We owe Susanne Fusso a great debt of gratitude for resourcefully tackling the challenge of bringing a major contemporary Russian prose text to the attention of a wide range of readers.

Fusso has provided an outstanding translation, drawing on her deep knowledge and understanding of Russian culture and language. Her choices of English equivalents for Gandlevsky's colloquial Russian and her sensitivity to English readers' need for additional cultural translation are remarkable.

That the poetry of [Gandlevsky's] prose resonates in translation is a tribute to Susanne Fusso's mastery of both modern, colloquial Russian and Gandlevsky's milieu.

Fusso's translation admirably retains Gandlevsky's dizzying cocktail of literary diction and slang, his relentless allusiveness to high and low culture.

This is a short, dense read (kudos to Fusso for her translation) that evokes all of the hopelessness and haplessness that filled life in that unusual period. And it is so beautifully written that is requires multiple visits.

Susanne Fusso has done an admirable job with this immensely complicated text.

Few books capture the proverbial spirit of their time and place as effectively: for all its introspective, indeed confessional, character, this memoir is a paean to a motley crew of individuals who chose freedom of expression in obscurity over conformity in dishonor.... Those of us teaching courses on (not-so-) Soviet Russian literature should thank Fusso for giving us a chance to offset the effects of Venedikt Yerofeyev's Moscow to the End of the Line with this genuinely uplifting, if decidedly unorthodox, tale of survival and absolution.

Stephanie Sandler, Harvard University:

Trepanation of the Skull embraces multiple forms of bravado, self-reproach, drunken escapade, family reminiscence, while making room for passages of great beauty, including the final lyrical meditation on death. It bursts with the varieties of linguistic expression, coarse and bawdy at one moment, twisting around a quotation from Nekrasov or Pushkin the next. Susanne Fusso, with her customary attention to detail and discerning ear for diction and tone, has produced a brilliant translation.

Alexandra Smith, University of Edinburgh:

Trepanation of the Skull is widely recognized as one of the most important books published in the post-Soviet period, a truly philosophical novel that explores the fictional nature of truth and reality. Susanne Fusso's wonderful translation demonstrates both her outstanding knowledge of the Russian language and Russian culture and her sensitivity to Gandlevsky's mode of writing.