The stakes are wildly high in Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky{u2019}s fantastic and blackly comic philosophical fables, which abound in nested narratives and wild paradoxes. This new collection of eleven mind-bending and spellbinding tales includes some of Krzhizhanovsky{u2019}s most dazzling conceits: a provincial journalist who moves to Moscow finds his existence consumed by the autobiography of his room{u2019}s previous occupant; the fingers of a celebrated pianist{u2019}s right hand run away to spend a night alone on the city streets; a man{u2019}s lifelong quest to bite his own elbow inspires both a hugely popular circus act and a new refutation of Kant. Ordinary reality cracks open before our eyes in the pages of Autobiography of a Corpse, and the extraordinary spills out.
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