Platonov’s Response to Stalin’s Assault on the Soviet Peasantry

To continue our Russian Literature Week celebration, today we are sharing an excerpt from Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Play by Andrei Platonov.

If you are in Washington, DC, don’t miss The Man Who Couldn’t Die author Olga Slavnikova and translator Marian Schwartz in conversation about the novel with writer Olga Grushin at the Hill Center at 7:00 pm.

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Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays by Andrei Platonov
Edited by Robert Chandler, translated by Robert Chandler, Jesse Irwin, and Susan Larsen

Considered one of the greatest Russian writers of the twentieth century, Andrei Platonov has garnered international accolades for his prose. Written in the 1930s, these plays offer an impassioned and penetrating response to Stalin’s assault on the Soviet peasantry. They reflect the political urgency of Bertolt Brecht and anticipate the tragic farce of Samuel Beckett but play out through dialogue and characterization that is unmistakably Russian.

Read an excerpt from the title play, “Fourteen Little Red Huts.”