Happy Moscow

Praise

“I squint back on our century and I see six writers I think it will be remembered for.  They are Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, William Faulkner, Andrey Platonov and Samuel Beckett…. They are summits in the literary landscape of our century … What’s more, they don’t lose an inch of their status when compared to the giants of fiction from the previous century.”—Joseph Brodsky

“Andrey Platonov is the most exciting Russian writer to be rediscovered since the end of the Soviet Union. Happy Moscow shows Platonov as a master of language, weaving out of official names, political speeches, ideological exhortations and popular philosophical hopes a reality equal to the gut feel of Soviet life in the 1930s….Happy Moscow remains an extraordinary read, because politics doesn’t get in the way. This is just what it felt like to be swept away by the Soviet ideal of a new humanity.” —The Independent
 
“Happy Moscow is worth reading on countless scores. On the violence, often not physical, which a totalitarian system wreaks on the lives of those who exist within it, it is a vital counterpart to those works which deal with the more tangible horrors of the USSR, and a reminder of the unique, paradoxical power of literature to expose the mismatch between rhetoric and reality.” —The Spectator
 
“In the Thirties Stalin proclaimed Moscow a paradise. This savage satire shows the truth through the eyes of the ebullient Moscow Chestnova. In Platonov’s hands she becomes a parody of a superwoman who leaves a career in aeronautics for lovers and life. Around her is a fascinating cast of characters and, even in translation, Platonov’s prose is extraordinary. This first English edition brings one of Russia’s great writers to light.” —The Times (London)
 
“Translated with what appears scrupulous imagination by Robert Chandler, Happy Moscow is stirringly readable, taking the air from totalitarian bombast and breathing new life into a neglected classic.” —The Observer
 
“Happy Moscow is a full-blown masterpiece, worthy not only of consideration alongside its author’s better-known works, but of comparison with modernist fiction’s greatest achievements.” —Tony Wood, New Left Review

“[Joseph Brodsky] identified Platonov as the only Russian writer capable of philosophically and stylistically transcending the tragedy of the twentieth century. Chandler’s exemplary translations are based on reliable texts, and yield the fruit of their long-standing collaboration with Russian and English speaking Platonov scholars.” —The Times Literary Supplement