Chevengur

This ambitious and thoughtful adventure from Platonov (1899–1951; Happy Moscow), denied publication by the Soviet Union, follows an orphan born in poverty who comes of age during the Russian Revolution. Deeply sensitive Sasha Dvanov leaves his foster father—the eccentric craftsman and mechanic Zakhar Pavlovich—to join up with revolutionary forces. Before long, he falls in with Kopionkin, a wandering champion of socialism dedicated to the memory of the martyred Polish German socialist Rosa Luxemburg. Kopionkin rides a workhorse turned warhorse whom he calls Strength of the Proletariat, and he and Sasha form a Quixotic duo, riding across the frigid Russian steppe in search of true socialism. The work is at once comic and rich in pathos: Platonov’s depictions of the long-suffering peasantry can veer toward the absurd (a devout communist named Pashintsev defends his corner of the revolution with makeshift armor and dud grenades), but he draws them in great detail, lending them gravity and humanity through measured prose and a bend toward realism. Eventually, Dvanov and Kopionkin are drawn to Chevengur, a remote steppe community that claims to have reached a state of socialist utopia with little guidance from Marx, where their idealism collides with the real world. Philosophical and oblique, Platonov’s rich story is undeniable. (Nov.)