Winner of the 2014 PEN Translation Prize
The stakes are wildly high in Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's fantastic and blackly comic philosophical fables, which abound in nested narratives and wild paradoxes. This new collection of eleven mind-bending and spellbinding tales includes some of Krzhizhanovsky's most dazzling conceits: a provincial journalist who moves to Moscow finds his existence consumed by the autobiography of his room's previous occupant; the fingers of a celebrated pianist's right hand run away to spend a night alone on the city streets; a man's lifelong quest to bite his own elbow inspires both a hugely popular circus act and a new refutation of Kant. Ordinary reality cracks open before our eyes in the pages of Autobiography of a Corpse, and the extraordinary spills out. The Autobiography of a Corpse is the NYRB Classics Book Club selection for December 2013. The Autobiography of a Corpse was published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia.by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, introduction by Adam Thirlwell, a new translation from the Russian by Joanne Turnbull
