Novel
Envy
Зависть
Yuri Olesha · 1927
Synopsis
Nikolai Kavalerov, twenty-seven, dreams of glory and feels blocked by the new society. Picked up drunk outside a brewery by Andrei Babichev, a former revolutionary turned director of the food trust, he is installed in his home. Babichev has perfected a sausage that does not spoil and is having an immense people's canteen built. Kavalerov envies him and comes to hate him, as he is jealous of Volodya Makarov, the young footballer whom Babichev protects. He finds an ally in his benefactor's brother, Ivan, who dreams of a “conspiracy of feelings”, and falls in love with his daughter Valya.
Context
The novel appeared in 1927 in the journal Krasnaya nov, in issues 7 and 8, then in volume form the following year. Britannica sees in it a satire in the tradition of Notes from Underground, on the conflict between old and new mentalities in the early Soviet years. The author, who was then working at Gudok alongside Bulgakov and Babel, made a play from it in 1929. The book was translated into English by Clarence Brown in 1985 and by Marian Schwartz in 2004.
Who it is for
A short, richly imagistic novel of great verbal invention, which is best read in a recent translation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as its author's masterpiece, and compared by Anglophone critics to the best books of Nabokov and Bulgakov.
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