The Return of Munchausen
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Baron Munchausen’s hold on the European imagination dates back to the late eighteenth century when he first pulled himself (and his horse) out of a swamp by his own upturned pigtail. Inspired by the extravagant yarns of a straight-faced former cavalry officer, Hieronymus von Münchhausen, the best-selling legend quickly eclipsed the real-life baron who helped the Russians fight the Turks. Galloping across continents and centuries, the mythical Munchausen’s Travels went through hundreds of editions of increasing length and luxuriance.
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, the Russian modernist master of the unsettling and the uncanny, also took certain liberties with the mythical baron. In this phantasmagoric roman à clef set in 1920s Berlin, London, and Moscow, Munchausen dauntlessly upholds his old motto “Truth in lies,” while remaining a fierce champion of his own imagination. At the same time, the two-hundred-year-old baron and self-taught philosopher has agreed to return to Russia, Lenin’s Russia, undercover. This reluctant secret agent has come out of retirement to engage with the real world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A time-traveling European folk hero becomes a fabulist diplomat in Krzhizhanovsky's clever, fantastical addition to the Baron M nchausen myth. Falling from "a gigantic clockface of the centuries" into the 1920s, M nchausen travels from Berlin to London, taking up residence in Mad Bean Cottage and conquering high society with his extraordinary tales; soon M nchausen's "aphorisms... are on lecterns in both houses of Parliament." Apparently sent on a mission to the Soviet Union, the Baron returns with his wildest account yet. He recounts that because "in that ruined country, the position of the hardworking highwayman is extremely troublesome and not to be envied," M nchausen eases the criminals' lot by teaching them to blow out the Moon as if it were a candle; in Moscow, M nchausen's reports of European capitals, Churchill, Chaplin, and "rivers of automobiles" literally melt a defunct countess. M nchausen's ardent European reception, however, cannot help him with his ultimate challenge facing a country that may be more darkly fanciful than his tales. Krzhizhanovsky, largely unpublished in the U.S.S.R. during his lifetime, draws both on M nchausen's traditional feats and on cultural lore from Augustine, Diderot, and others. By sending his wily hero into the heart of Bolshevism, he insists that "sooner or later the nightingale will outwarble the factory whistle." Readers will discover in this remarkable novel a very serious satire, an honest fable, and a bit of genius.
