num_pages: 230
description: The stakes are wildly high in Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's fantastic and blackly comic philosophical fables, which abound in nested narratives and wild paradoxes. This new collection of eleven mind-bending and spellbinding tales includes some of Krzhizhanovsky's most dazzling conceits: a provincial journalist who moves to Moscow finds his existence consumed by the autobiography of his room's previous occupant; the fingers of a celebrated pianist's right hand run away to spend a night alone on the city streets; a man's lifelong quest to bite his own elbow inspires both a hugely popular circus act and a new refutation of Kant. Ordinary reality cracks open before our eyes in the pages of Autobiography of a Corpse, and the extraordinary spills out.Contents:Autobiography of a corpse --In the pupil --Seams --The collector of cracks --The land of nots --The runaway fingers --The unbitten elbow --Yellow coal --Bridge over the Styx --Thirty pieces of silver --Postmark: Moscow.
language: English
title: Autobiography of a Corpse
publisher: NYRB Classics