Zamjatin, Evgenii (Zamyatin, Zamiatin).

[SECOND APPEARANCE IN PRINT] My: román [We: a novel].; Lidová knihovna Aventina, svazek 23 [Aventinum's Popular library, volume 23].

Prague: Ot. Storch-Marien, 1927. Small octavo (16.5 × 11.5 cm). Original decorative wrappers; 172, [3] pp. Publisher's ads. Very good or better; with just a tiny tear to the lower spine. Item #P6736

The second ever appearance in print of Zamyatin's only completed novel, a groundbreaking work in the genre of a futuristic dystopia that was read as a bitter satire on Soviet society and could not be published in Russia. Completed in 1921, it was first issued in an English translation in 1924 (New York, E. P. Dutton), on which the present translation was actually by and large based. Evidently Roman Jakobson, living in Prague at the time, helped the translator, Vaclav Koenig, by repeatedly writing to Zamiatin and even requesting a copy of the English translation (Olshanskaya, 266). This translation even preceded the severely altered version of the Russian original that appeared in the Russian emigre journal "Volia Rossii", also in early 1927. In order to avoid repercussions for Zamyatin, who was then still living in the Soviet Union, the editor of "Volia Rossii" had pretended to publish a translation of a Czech literary work. Nevertheless, "the apearance of the Russian version in Volia Rossii caused an open political campaign against Zamiatin in the Soviet Union, and in 1931 he wrote a letter to Stalin requesting permission to emigrate" (Olshansky, 267). The Czech translation is rare, with KVK, OCLC showing only the copies at the Czech National Library and in Ljubljana.

Price: €750.00

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