Novel
It's Me, Eddie
Это я — Эдичка
Eduard Limonov · 1979
Synopsis
Édouard, a Russian poet who emigrated to New York in the mid-1970s, has just been left by his wife, Elena, who has gone off with a richer man. He lives in a dilapidated hotel room, on the allowance paid to him by American social assistance, eats sour cabbage soup, works for a time in a restaurant and attends meetings of Trotskyist groups. The narrator, who speaks in the first person, discovers a West very far from the one he had idealised.
Context
Written in New York in 1976, the novel first appeared in 1979. The author speaks in it under his own first name and recounts the life he led in New York after leaving the Soviet Union. The French translation by Emmanuelle Davidov came out in 1980 from Ramsay and was reissued by Flammarion in 2012. In English, the book appeared in 1983 under the title It's Me, Eddie, in S. L. Campbell's translation.
Who it is for
An autobiographical novel, raw and at times violent, aimed at adult and informed readers.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the novel par excellence of the third wave of Russian emigration.
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