An Armenian Sketchbook - Hardcover

AN ARMENIAN SKETCHBOOK (First UK edition - first impression - a near fine copy)

Hardcover. Zustand: Near Fine. Zustand des Schutzumschlags: Near Fine. First UK Edition. A first impression of the first UK edition, with the full number line: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 on the printer's page. This is also the first hardcover edition, as the book was published in English translation in the USA by the New York Review of Books (NYRB) as a paperback original. Translated from the Russian by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler. First published in Russian as "Dobro Vam" by Agraf, Moscow in 1998. This edition has seven monochrome photographic illustrations within the text. ***Near fine in black cloth-covered boards with gilt titles on the spine. The gilt is still beautifully bright having been protected by the dustwrapper. The boards are clean and unmarked, and there is no creasing or bumping to the vulnerable spine and edges of the boards. Corners sharp. Page block nice and tight with a sewn binding. Page block edges nice and clean. Internally also near fine with no inscriptions. Pages clean with no internal foxing. No creases or tears. Spine tight. ***In a near fine colour illustrated dustwrapper, which has not been price-clipped, retaining the original publisher's printed price of £12.00. The dustwrapper is complete, with no discernible faults. No rubbing, creases, chips or tears. No fading. Dustwrapper bright. ***221 pages including: Notes, Chronology, Further Reading, Translator's Acknowledgments, and Biographies at the back of the book. 200mm x 140mm. ***'Few writers confronted so many of the twentieth century's mass tragedies as Vasily Grossman, remembered for the terrifying clarity with which he wrote about the Holocaust and the Battle of Stalingrad. "An Armenian Sketchbook" is by far the most personal and intimate of Grossman's works, and is remarkable for its warmth, humour and spontaneity.' (Quote taken from the front flap of the dustwrapper) ***'Vasily Semyonovich Grossman (12 Dec 1905 - 14 Sep 1964) was a Soviet writer and journalist. Born to a Jewish family in Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, Grossman trained as a chemical engineer at Moscow State University, earning the nickname Vasya-khimik ("Vasya the Chemist") because of his diligence as a student. Upon graduation, he took a job in Stalino (now Donetsk) in the Donets Basin. In the 1930s he changed careers and began writing full-time, publishing a number of short stories and several novels. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Grossman was engaged as a war correspondent by the Red Army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda; he wrote first-hand accounts of the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, and Berlin. Grossman's eyewitness reports of a Nazi extermination camp, following the discovery of Treblinka, were among the earliest accounts of a Nazi death camp by a reporter. There is some dispute over the extent of the state repression Grossman endured after the war. While he was never arrested, his two major literary works ("Life and Fate" and "Everything Flows" were censored by Nikita Khrushchev's government as unacceptably anti-Soviet. At the time of Grossman's death from kidney cancer in 1964, these books remained unreleased. Hidden copies were eventually smuggled out of the Soviet Union by a network of dissidents, including Andrei Sakharov and Vladimir Voinovich, and first published in the West in 1980, before appearing in the Soviet Union in 1988.' (Wiki) ***A first impression of the first UK edition of Vasily Grossman's "An Armenian Sketchbook", in beautiful near fine collectable condition. For some reason, copies of this first impression of the first UK edition are extremely hard to come by. ***For all our books, postage is charged at cost, allowing for packaging: any shipping rates indicated on ABE are an average only: we will reduce the P & P charge where appropriate - please contact us for postal rates for heavier books and sets etc. Artikel-Nr. 9628

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