The Keeper Of Antiquities

The Keeper Of Antiquities

Summary

The Keeper of Antiquities is simultaneously one of the great Russian modern novels and a key to understanding the terrible Stalinist purges of the late 1930s.

Set far from Moscow in the remote Kazakhstan capital of Alma-Ata, The Keeper of Antiquities begins with a leisurely, almost scholarly air - like a devious story by Borges. But very soon we find ourselves watching with horror as professional rivalry between the keeper of the town's museum and the chief librarian turns into a deadly struggle for control over the meaning of the past - and therefore over the present.

Reviews

  • A spirited, often anguished, indictment of mindless officialdom wherever it appears
    Kirkus Reviews

About the author

Yury Dombrovsky

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