The Humble Cemetery: With Gleb Bogdyshev Goes Moonlighting
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Very good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
In the shadow of Soviet-era Moscow, where the forgotten dead are tended by the overlooked living, The Humble Cemetery presents a stark and unflinching portrait of gravediggers and cemetery workers navigating lives of quiet desperation, moral compromise, and unexpected humanity. Sergei Kaledin's novella strips away the grandeur of official Soviet ideology to reveal the raw, unglamorous reality of those who exist at society's margins, bound together by labour, vodka, and an intimacy with mortality that most choose to ignore. Paired with the companion piece Gleb Bogdyshev Goes Moonlighting, this volume doubles down on its examination of the Soviet underclass, chronicling the grim hustle of ordinary men scraping by in a system that has little use for them. Kaledin writes with a brutal economy and a sharp social conscience, drawing comparisons to the great tradition of Russian realist prose while carving out a distinctly late-Soviet voice — one of disillusionment, dark humour, and defiant compassion. First published in the reformist climate of glasnost, the work caused considerable controversy in the USSR for its unvarnished depiction of social decay, marking Kaledin as one of the most provocative voices of his generation. Catriona Kelly's authoritative translation renders his terse, colloquial Russian with precision and atmosphere, leaving the reader to wonder what other shadows remain unexamined beneath the surface of everyday life.
Author: Sergei Kaledin
Format: Hardback
Published: 1990, Collins Harvill
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Very good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
In the shadow of Soviet-era Moscow, where the forgotten dead are tended by the overlooked living, The Humble Cemetery presents a stark and unflinching portrait of gravediggers and cemetery workers navigating lives of quiet desperation, moral compromise, and unexpected humanity. Sergei Kaledin's novella strips away the grandeur of official Soviet ideology to reveal the raw, unglamorous reality of those who exist at society's margins, bound together by labour, vodka, and an intimacy with mortality that most choose to ignore. Paired with the companion piece Gleb Bogdyshev Goes Moonlighting, this volume doubles down on its examination of the Soviet underclass, chronicling the grim hustle of ordinary men scraping by in a system that has little use for them. Kaledin writes with a brutal economy and a sharp social conscience, drawing comparisons to the great tradition of Russian realist prose while carving out a distinctly late-Soviet voice — one of disillusionment, dark humour, and defiant compassion. First published in the reformist climate of glasnost, the work caused considerable controversy in the USSR for its unvarnished depiction of social decay, marking Kaledin as one of the most provocative voices of his generation. Catriona Kelly's authoritative translation renders his terse, colloquial Russian with precision and atmosphere, leaving the reader to wonder what other shadows remain unexamined beneath the surface of everyday life.