Disintegration of the Atom. Petersburg Winters

This book presents translations of two celebrated works by Georgy Ivanov. Disintegration of the Atom (1938) is a prose poem depicting Russian émigré despair on the eve of WWII—a cri de coeur that challenges prevailing concepts of time and space, ending in erotically charged wretchedness. Petersburg Winters (1928/1952) is a portrait of Petersburg swept up in the artistic ferment of late Imperial and Revolutionary Russia. The spirit of the city is conveyed through a series of vignettes of Ivanov’s contemporaries, including Blok, Akhmatova, Esenin, and Mandelstam.