Buy this book on-line

Sorokin, Vladimir Georgievich (Translated by Sally Laird) : The Queue

Readers International, New York City, NY, 1985

ISBN 093052344X

First Edition / First Printing. Fine in Fine Dust Jacket. 200 pages. The author's first book to be translated into English. One of the greatest novels of our time. The first appearance of the title in English and in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now rare. Presents Vladimir Sorokin's "The Queue" in a felicitous English translation. His masterpiece. First published by the great exiled Russian writer Andrei Sinyavsky in France, banned/never published during the Soviet regime, and now widely considered a Modernist masterwork. Neither a play nor a novel, Sorokin has famously described his ground-breaking work as operating at the outermost limits of literature. His translator has written an Introduction that remains illuminating to this day: "More than anything perhaps, it resembles a musical score, the score of some bizarre street symphony. Its notes are words, grunts, cries, all the noises that humans make talking, cursing, drinking tea, swallowing sour cream, making love" (Sally Laird). Sorokin rejects the conventional novel, particularly in its Socialist Realism form, not literature itself, by turning the absurdities of modern life into his very own Theatre of The Absurd. At dawn, the people whose voices we hear throughout the book gather and form a queue. Like all of his great predecessors in Russian and Western literature, his book is a radical (and at the time, courageous and noble) attempt to re-think, re-create, and re-write writing. An absolute "must-have" title for Vladimir Sorokin collectors. This copy is very boldly and beautifully signed and dated in black ink-pen on the title page by the author: "Vladimir Sorokin 30.04.2011". It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. Sorokin made a rare appearance at the 2011 PEN World Festival. Laid-in is a copy of the 60-page Souvenir Program. This title is a great book. As far as we know, this is the only such signed and dated copy of the First American Edition/First Printing available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a beauty. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. Winner of the Andrei Bely Award, the most important literary prize in Russia, for his body of work in 2001. One of the most brilliant writers of our time. A fine collectible copy. . ISBN 093052344X.

1
1

Bibliophile Bookbase for antiquarian books, maps and prints.