The Keeper of Antiquities: A Novel

By Yury Dombrovsky

Book Overview

Set in the remote capital of Kazakhstan, far away from Moscow, this novel begins with a leisurely, almost scholarly air. Soon it turns into a game of professional rivalry between the keeper of the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0582100275
• ISBN13: 9780582100275
• Release Date: January 1969
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Length: 273 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Comical and absurdist, a little world hiding in the hinterlands during the purges--

This novel is skillfully written, flows well with effortless dialogue, and the action is tied in with finely stitched descriptive observation, which ground it in a convincing and detailed context. The emphasis is on the comical, eccentric characters and behaviors and absurdist political debates over the choice of exhibits in a soviet museum located in the hinterland of Kazakhstan in the 1930s. I would find it purely comical but at the same time, against the backdrop of the purges, I could not dismiss the fear that this little world and its charmingly silly adamant officiousness could, in a moment, fall into persecution and darkness. Ominous reflections aside, the book is light, whimsical, loaded with absurdist humor. It is amazing that a writer who had suffered so much from the purges was able to create such a fanciful response. It might be testimony to his transcending humanity, or he might not have had a choice.