Viktor Shklovskii Livres

Viktor Shklovsky's "A Sentimental Journey," which borrows its title from Laurence Sterne, describes the travels of a bewildered intellectual through Russia, Persia, the Ukraine, and the Caucasus during the period of the Russian Revolution. Valuable as a historical document for its first-hand account of the events during the period of 1917-1922, "A Sentimental Journey" is also an important experimental literary work--a memoir in the form of a novel. At times lyrical, disturbing, ironic, and erudite, "A Sentimental Journey" is a singular book from one of the most recognizable and influential voices of twentieth-century Russian literature.

While living in exile in Berlin, the formidable literary critic Viktor Shklovsky fell in love with Elsa Triolet. He fell into the habit of sending Elsa several letters a day, a situation she accepted under one condition: he was forbidden to write about love. Zoo, or Letters Not about Love is an epistolary novel born of this constraint, and although the brilliant and playful letters contained here cover everything from observations about contemporary German and Russian life to theories of art and literature, nonetheless every one of them is indirectly dedicated to the one topic they are all required to avoid: their author's own unrequited love.