Angels on the Head of a Pin

Overview

In this contemporary Russian classic, a samizdat document arrives at a Soviet newspaper headquarters with unimaginable consequences.Angels on the Head of a Pin is set in Moscow in the late 1960s, at a time when Khrushchev-era liberalization is being threatened by the return to personality cult and repression following the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia. The editor-in-chief of the organ of the Communist Party collapses with a heart attack outside the Central Committee building. This is partly brought on by the appearance of a samizdat manuscript on his desk that leads to his anguishing over who left it there and what to do with it to avoid falling victim to the malevolence its content is likely to unleash. The solution lies with Yakov Rappoport, an ageing and cynical Jewish veteran of the war and two spells in the Gulag, the author of not only the obnoxious popular campaigns sponsored by the newspaper (and all its letters to the editor) but of every speech that gets made in public by the principals of the regime as well. His efforts to help his stricken editor, as well as the novel's star-crossed lovers, lead to a hallucinatory climax.

Reviews

"I congratulate Yuri Druzhnikov on an excellent and very important book. This is the way, gradually, that at least most Soviet lies will be revealed, if not all of them."  —Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"Ambitious epic satire . . . Employing the newspaper in much the same way that Solzhenitsyn used a hospital as a metaphor in Cancer Ward, Druzhnikov captures the essence of Russian life before the collapse of Communism."  —Publishers Weekly

"Combines a sense of humour with a fantastic ability to write between the lines."  —Isaac Bashevis Singer

Author Biography

Yuri Druzhnikov is a professor at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of a number of works of fiction and non-fiction and he was nominated by Poland for the Nobel prize.