Barcelona Prose is a collection of autobiographical essays by the gifted translator, literary scholar, and dissident, Efim Etkind. These engaging, deeply psychological vignettes capture the reality of daily life and work in the Soviet Union. Unlike other memoirists who have faced hardships, Etkind’s tone is never cruel or embittered. Told through the lens of a practiced scholar, he captures the absurdity of a cultural-political experiment that destroyed his family’s life, his own career, and that of many of his colleagues. By the time of Etkind’s death, he did not rework these essays into a continuous narrative. Originally published in Russian, this first-ever English translation prepared by Etkind’s daughter presents his memoirs as a document of his time, without any changes or abridgements. The editors’ additions are limited to several notes, proofreading of quotes, and checking or inserting the full forms of the characters’ names.
Table of Content
In Lieu of a Foreword
He Outsmarted Us
Full Repair!
The Marquis de Lapunaise
The Russian Intelligentsia: Two Generations
Looking through the Walls
The Double
Ferenc, Count Batthyány
Ebensee
“On the Sly”
How We Lived
“The Blond Hidden in a Bottle”
Triumph of Spirit
Up the Down Stairscase
It Turned Out Okay
About the Axe
Last Meeting
Pavel Antokolsky: Generation of the Blind
Cousin
“The Other”
The Cowardice of a Brave Man
Two Jewish Fates: Reading the Diaries of Victor Klemperer
“Youth in a Military Blouse” of My Contemporary
Afterword: A Knight of Culture by David Bethea
List of Names
About the author
Efim Etkind (1918-1999) was a Soviet philologist and literary historian who published more than 500 articles in academic journals. He was known for founding his own school of European poetry translation. He supported dissidents such as Joseph Brodsky, A. I. Solzhenitsyn and A. D. Sakharov in the 1960s and 1970s, was accused of anti-Soviet activity and eventually stripped of his academic degree and position. Unable to find other work, he was deported out of the USSR and emigrated to Paris, where he taught at the Université Paris-Nanterre until 1986.
More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
49,278 Ebooks in this category
