Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays

Russian Library

by Andrei Platonov, Robert Chandler (Editor), Susan Larsen (Translator)

In this essential collection of Andrei Platonov's plays, the noted Platonov translator Robert Chandler edits and introduces "The Hurdy-Gurdy" (translated by Susan Larsen), "The Fourteen Little Red Huts" (translated by Chandler), and "Grandmother's Little Hut" (translated by Jesse Irwin). Written in 1930 and 1933, respectively, "The Hurdy-Gurdy "and" The Fourteen Little Red Huts "constitute an impassioned and penetrating response to Stalin's assault on the Soviet peasantry. They reflect the political urgency of Bertolt Brecht and anticipate the tragic farce of Samuel Beckett but play out through dialogue and characterization that is unmistakably Russian. This volume also includes "Grandmother's Little Hut," an unfinished play that represents Platonov's later, gentler work.

Genres: Russian Literature, Russia, Plays, Classics, 20th Century

248 pages, Paperback

Published December 6, 2016

About the author

Andrei Platonov, August 28, 1899 – January 5, 1951, was the pen name of Andrei Platonovich Klimentov, a Soviet author whose works anticipate existentialism. Although Platonov was a communist, his works were banned in his own lifetime for their skeptical attitude toward collectivization and other Stalinist policies.

From 1918 through 1921, his most intensive period as a writer, he published dozens of poems (an anthology appeared in 1922), several stories, and hundreds of articles and essays, adopting in 1920 the Platonov pen name by which he is best known. With remarkably high energy and intellectual precocity he wrote confidently across a wide range of topics including literature, art, cultural life, science, philosophy, religion, education, politics, the civil war, foreign relations, economics, technology, famine, and land reclamation, amongst others.

His famous works include the novels The Foundation Pit and Chevengur.

Reviews

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Plotonov is one of Russia’s greatest novelists. Chandler is my favorite Russian translator. Soul is one of my favorite novellas of all time. These often absurd plays are pretty great too.

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes reality/history bears a striking resemblance to an absurdist/surrealist tragedy.

[Guy Salvidge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Platonov is an amazing but mostly obscure Soviet-era writer. Much of his work was suppressed during his lifetime and has only been published in recent decades (he died in 1951). This collection of plays showcases his satiric talents, nearly suicidally-so, one would imagine. 'The Hurdy-Gurdy' is an amusing though sad romp featuring a mechanical man, among other things. 'Fourteen Little Red Huts' offers an increasingly desperate account of activists starving to death on a rural kolkhoz during the time of collectivisation (early 1930s). By the end, nearly everyone is dead.

I'm hunting down everything this man wrote.

[JJS. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The three plays by Andrei Platonov in this collection show Platonov's talent as a playwright. The title play 'Fourteen Little Red Huts' is particularly good tragic play. Hope that his plays do get used for theatre more often, given that they are rarely staged, given his rather recent discovery among English readers.

[J Earl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume collects three of Andrei Platonov's plays and, most importantly for most English speakers, a contextualization which places the works in their historical and political period. While the plays are certainly able to be appreciated as general social and political statements without the background the experience is considerably richer with the history.

My background is literature and not theater so I did not, on first reading, pay attention to how easy or difficult they would be to stage. Because of that I read it much as one would read a novel. It was the rereading with an eye toward staging, through my amateurish eyes, when I saw both the difficulty in doing so but also the potential for making the plays speak to contemporary times as well as the early 20th century in the Soviet Union. That said, I also acknowledge that what I can picture in my head and what can be reasonably accomplished on stage are likely very different.

I would highly recommend this to students of Soviet history or literature. For the history student this is a primary document that addresses issues from how the peasants were treated to how art can sometimes circumvent authoritarian rule. For general literature or drama fans I would also recommend this though I would suggest reading it initially from the perspective of story and dialogue and not staging, then come back to it as a work written to be staged.

[Francesca Wigley · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Takes a pill from INTERHOM, swallows, and immediately turns to the GREETER.) Where can I see socialism? Show it to me at once. Capitalism irritates me.