num_pages: 164
description: While living in exile in Berlin, the formidable literary critic Viktor Shklovsky fell in love with Elsa Triolet. He fell into the habit of sending Elsa several letters a day, a situation she accepted under one condition: he was forbidden to write about love. Zoo, or Letters Not about Love is an epistolary novel born of this constraint, and although the brilliant and playful letters contained here cover everything from observations about contemporary German and Russian life to theories of art and literature, nonetheless every one of them is indirectly dedicated to the one topic they are all required to avoid: their author's own unrequited love.
language: English
title: Zoo or Letters Not About Love
titlecomplete: Zoo or Letters Not About Love
genres: Classics, Russia, Novels, Russian Literature, 20th Century, Poetry, Literature, Fiction, Theory
ratings_count: 733
places: Berlin
publisher: Dalkey Archive Press