VOINOVA, A. I. Semi-Precious Stones. Trans. from the Russian by Valentine Snow. New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith. 1931. 8vo. First English language edition. Publisher’s black cloth lettered in pale yellow to the spine, in the dust jacket which is certainly in the style of Arthur Hawkins Jr., though unsigned. A very good or better copy. The cloth clean and bright, a trifle rubbed at bottom corners. The binding tight and square, the contents clean and fine throughout. The dust jacket unclipped ($3.00), with several very small closed tears and a few small chips around the spine tips, but a bright and pleasing copy overall.
A curious novel set amid government offices dealing with semi-precious gemstone deposits in 1920s Soviet Union. Voinova is purportedly a pseudonym of Aleksandra Ivanovna Dandurova, and this—her first novel, presumably—first appeared there in 1930. It gained considerable readership immediately before after a few months the powers above confiscated the text on the basis it was critical of the Soviets and of Communism generally—which it is, being a quite measured satire of the Kafkaesque systems of bureaucracy and corruption that help blind its citizens, this told from a respectable bourgeois government official. Its early success enabled publishers in the US, Norway and other countries to translate the text before the ban. The publishers here called it ‘one of the most poignant’ of Russian novels, ‘the least complicated by Soviet dogma and the long harangues that mar so much of the work of today’s Communist novelists'. Uncommon.
VOINOVA, A. I. Semi-Precious Stones. Trans. from the Russian by Valentine Snow. New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith. 1931. 8vo. First English language edition. Publisher’s black cloth lettered in pale yellow to the spine, in the dust jacket which is certainly in the style of Arthur Hawkins Jr., though unsigned. A very good or better copy. The cloth clean and bright, a trifle rubbed at bottom corners. The binding tight and square, the contents clean and fine throughout. The dust jacket unclipped ($3.00), with several very small closed tears and a few small chips around the spine tips, but a bright and pleasing copy overall.
A curious novel set amid government offices dealing with semi-precious gemstone deposits in 1920s Soviet Union. Voinova is purportedly a pseudonym of Aleksandra Ivanovna Dandurova, and this—her first novel, presumably—first appeared there in 1930. It gained considerable readership immediately before after a few months the powers above confiscated the text on the basis it was critical of the Soviets and of Communism generally—which it is, being a quite measured satire of the Kafkaesque systems of bureaucracy and corruption that help blind its citizens, this told from a respectable bourgeois government official. Its early success enabled publishers in the US, Norway and other countries to translate the text before the ban. The publishers here called it ‘one of the most poignant’ of Russian novels, ‘the least complicated by Soviet dogma and the long harangues that mar so much of the work of today’s Communist novelists'. Uncommon.
Image 1 of 5
Image 2 of 5
Image 3 of 5
Image 4 of 5
Image 5 of 5