Illegible

Sergey Gandlevsky's 2002 novel Illegible has a double time focus, centering on the immediate experiences of Lev Krivorotov, a twenty-year-old poet living in Moscow in the 1970s, as well as his retrospective meditations thirty years later after most of his hopes have foundered. As the story begins, Lev is involved in a tortured affair with an older woman and consumed by envy of his more privileged friend and fellow beginner poet Nikita, one of the children of high Soviet functionaries who were known as "golden youth."

In both narratives, Krivorotov recounts with regret and self-castigation the failure of a double infatuation, his erotic love for the young student Anya and his artistic love for the poet Viktor Chigrashov. When this double infatuation becomes a romantic triangle, the consequences are tragic.

In Illegible, as in his poems, Gandlevsky gives us unparalleled access to the atmosphere of the city of Moscow and the ethos of the late Soviet and post-Soviet era, while at the same time demonstrating the universality of human emotion.

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

Susanne Fusso is Marcus L. Taft Professor of Modern Languages and Professor of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at Wesleyan University. Her most recent book is Editing Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy.

The translation is excellent, the notes informative. Gandlevsky's novella provides insight into the everyday life of Russian/Soviet poets and writers who were part of the unofficial culture of the 1970s.

Sarah Pratt, University of Southern California, author of Nikolai Zabolotsky:

The quality of the translation is superb. The work captures Soviet and anti-Soviet language, themes, and the ambience of the time and the place, but it does not 'read like a translation.' The naturalness of the language is stunning.