The Return

People are on the move in all ten stories in this collection--coming home as in "The Return, "leaving home as in "Rubbish Wind, " traveling far away from their country as in "The Locks of Epiphan"--trying to improve their lives and those of others, searching and fleeing.

Their journeys are accompanied by two motives, which characterize the writing of Andrey Platonov: optimism and faith in the goodness of humanity, and abject despair at the cruelty and apparent senselessness of our existence.

The protagonists are torn between these poles and sometimes a synthesis shines through the blackness of despair--the hope against hope that a better life is still possible.

Combining realism with poetic vision and the deceptively simple language of folktales, Platonov lights up his stories by using language in a way that renders it unfamiliar, making the ordinary seem unusual and the extraordinary logical.

This new translation is the first to present Platonov's gift as a short-story writer to an English-language readership, showing why it is that Joseph Brodsky regarded Platonov as the equal of Joyce, Kafka, and Proust.