This is the first work by Victor Beilis to make it into English since the single-volume publication in 2002 of a duo of novellas-"The Rehabilitation of Freud & Bakhtin and Others"(translated by Richard Grose). Much like the novellas that preceded it, "Death of a Prototype" is a hyper-allusive and self-consciously difficult work. Beilis engages closely with an entire spectrum of Russian and European cultural traditions, from classical antiquity to twentieth-century postmodernism. Structurally heterogeneous and fragmented with styles, genres and narrators succeeding one another at great speed, "Death of a Prototype" is also highly balanced and controlled, in some ways recalling a contrapuntal musical composition abounding in thematic echoes and correspondences. "Death of a Prototype" simultaneously challenges and rewards the reader, especially one attuned to fine-grain detail.

"Death of a Prototype" is a novel that simultaneously challenges and rewards the reader, especially one attuned to fine-grain detail.

About the Author

Victor Beilis is a scholar of African folklore and author of numerous short stories and one novel.

Leo Shtutin is a translator of literary fiction from Russian.

Reviews

Beilis's novel is demonically and tantalizingly allusive: it is a complex web of explicit and veiled quotation and stylization, parody, pastiche and paraphrase. Here is the gamut of Russian and Western European cultural traditions, from antiquity to postmodernism: Russian greats from Pushkin to Venedikt Erofeev, via Osip Mandelstam, Vladimir Nabokov and the illustrious House of Tolstoy; European literature from Ovid to Oscar Wilde via Rilke and Goethe; and the philosophical canon, embracing Vasily Rozanov, Sigmund Freud and Mikhail Bakhtin. https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/victor-beilis/

Book Information
ISBN 9781783086726
Author Victor Beilis
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint Anthem Press
Publisher Anthem Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 204mm * 127mm * 26mm