The blistering 1928 Bolshevik satire, unpublishable in the Russia until 1988 - in a brand new translation

'A love that cannot be throttled by the rubber tube of an enema bulb is immortal.'

Bookish and idealistic Vladimir is tormented with love for Olga; he brings her flowers when other men bring her flour and millet. Olga eventually agrees to marry him, as her building’s central heating will be out of service all winter and at least with two in the bed they’ll be warmer. When she decides she’d like to serve the revolution, he introduces her to his brother Sergei, a Bolshevik who manages the waterways. Thus begins an excruciating love triangle, measured in ration coupons and black market goods.

Described by the poet Joseph Brodsky as 'one of the most innovative novels in Russian literature', Marienhof’s Cynics is a pitch-black comedy set during the wild and savage years of War Communism and the New Economic Policy. Cinematic in its style and collagist in its aesthetic, it establishes Marienhof as a true formal radical. It is a bawdy, savage, lavishly emotional portrayal of working for the revolution (and trying to ignore it).

Anatoly Marienhof (1897–1962) was a poet, novelist, dramatist and memoirist. Marienhof became a leading figure of the avant-garde Imaginist movement, and was the author of the novels The Novel without Lies (1926) and Cynics (1928). Bryan Karetnyk is a British writer and translator. His recent translations include major works by Yuri Felsen, Gaito Gazdanov and Boris Poplavsky. He is also the editor of the landmark Penguin Classics anthology Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky.