Additional information
by Miroslav Krleza (Author), Dragana Obradovic (Introduction by), Will Firth (Translator)
When Miroslav Krleza traveled through Russia for six months between the end of 1924 and the beginning of 1925, the celebrated Croatian writer was there to figure out what it all meant. The sprawling country was still coming to terms with the events of the 1917 revolution and reeling from Lenin's death in January 1924. During this period of profound political and social transition, Krleza opened his senses to train stations, cities, and villages and collected wildly different Russian perspectives on their collective moment in history. Krleza's impressionistic reportage of mass demonstrations and jubilant Orthodox Easter celebrations is informed by his preoccupation with the political, social, and psychological complexities of his environment. The result is a masterfully crafted modernist travelogue that resonates today as much as it did when first published in 1926.
Author Biography
Regarded as the most important twentieth-century Croatian author, Miroslav Krleza (1893-1981) wrote modernist poems, plays, novels, and essays that, in the words of Susan Sontag, protested "against the normality of delusion and cruelty," and earned him comparisons to Honore de Balzac, Emile Zola, and James Joyce. His novels The Return of Philip Latinowicz and On the Edge of Reason have both been translated into English. Dragana Obradovic is an Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto. Will Firth was born in 1965 in Newcastle, Australia. He studied German and Slavic languages in Canberra, Zagreb, and Moscow. Since 1991 he has lived in Berlin, where he works as a translator of literature and the humanities--from Russian, Macedonian, and all variants of the "language with many names," aka Serbo-Croatian. In 2005-07 he translated for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Firth is a member of professional associations in Germany (VdÜ) and Britain (Translators Association).
