The Faculty of Useless Knowledge

Download or read book The Faculty of Useless Knowledge written by I︠U︡riĭ Osipovich Dombrovskiĭ and published by Harvill Secker. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important novel, first published in Russian in 1978, reveals a master of the Stalinist era. The Year of Terror, 1937. Zybin, an exiled intellectual and archaeologist in the far province of Alma-Ata, finds himself wrongly accused of a crime during the darkest days of Stalin's reign. Soon, he and his colleagues are caught up in an ambitious Cheka investigator's attempts to set up a show trial to rival those taking place in Moscow. Vivid, courageous and defiant, The Faculty of Useless Knowledge is the crowning achievement by the author of The Keeper of Antiquities and The Dark Lady and draws heavily on autobiographical experience. A masterpiece of anti-totalitarian literature, it stands alongside the works of Solzhenitsyn and Bulgakov in illuminating the chaos, absurdity and bureaucratic labyrinths of Soviet Russia.