Boris Khazanov - Writer in Freedom? Roots and Expulsion: Two Millennia Cover Image

Boris Khazanov - Writer in Freedom? Roots and Expulsion: Two Millennia
Boris Khazanov - Writer in Freedom? Roots and Expulsion: Two Millennia

Author(s): Marko Kurt
Subject(s): History, Studies of Literature, Recent History (1900 till today), Russian Literature
Published by: AV ČR - Akademie věd České republiky - Slovanský ústav and Euroslavica
Keywords: Boris Khazanov; Russian literature; history;

Summary/Abstract: When in 1976, more than twenty years ago, a story by a completely unknown author reached the publishers of a Russian magazine for exiles via the mysterious ways of the then underground press, there was great surprise. The bottle post did not fit within any of the established genres of the unofficial literature. The subject of Die Konigsstunde (The Hour of the King) was fantastic, but at the same time, highly and dramatically political, and hardly disguised: the occupation of a small, defenceless country, like Denmark, by the army; the absurd doctorpatient relationship between the king, whose civil occupation was urology, and the incurably sick dictator; the demonstrative support of the royal couple for the Jews in their country... all related in a precise and laconic tone where fantastic, absurd and cruel elements occurred seemingly casually, with the precision of an etching or an anecdote by Heinrich von Kleist. It was not surprising that Viktor Perelman, into whose hands the manuscript came, spoke of a miracle and placed the newcomer - Boris Khazanov - on the same level as Mikhail Bulgakov in terms of the Russian literary tradition.

  • Issue Year: II/1997
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 33-42
  • Page Count: 10
  • Language: English