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Обезьяна приходит за своим черепом
" J'ai commenc crire ce roman l'automne de l'anne 1943, sur un lit d'hpital, n'ayant en ma possession qu'un unique cahier d'colier dont m'avait fait cadeau le mdecin et un bout de bois sur lequel tait attache une plume. " L'auteur de ces lignes, Iouri Dombrovski, crivain, historien, anthropologue, archologue, pote, juif, tzigane, russe et polonais a trente-six ans. II sort de quatre ans de camp sibrien. Ce roman, son premier texte achev, djoue toutes les attentes. Car en pleine guerre patriotique, au fond du Kazakhstan, il invente un pays ressemblant une France possible que les nazis occupent, il invente une famille ordinaire o des humanistes rsistent, d'autres trahissent, il invente des officiers nazis falsifiant des fossiles pour rester crdibles, il invente un monde redevenant primate. Il invente tout. Mais, en 1949, son livre sera qualifi de " cosmopolite fasciste ", et son auteur renvoy pour dix ans en Sibrie. A son retour, en 1958, cet homme en trop, comme tous les revenants des camps, reprend son roman, se remet inventer.
477 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1959
About the author
Yury Dombrovsky
12 books22 followersYury Osipovich Dombrovsky (Russian: Ю́рий О́сипович Домбро́вский) (May 12, 1909 - May 29, 1978) was a Russian writer who spent nearly eighteen years in Soviet prison camps and exile.
Dombrovsky was the son of Jewish lawyer Joseph Hedal Dombrovsky and Russian mother. Yury fell foul of the authorities as early as 1932, for his part in the student suicide case described in The Faculty of Useless Knowledge. He was exiled to Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan where he established himself as a teacher, and which provided the setting for his novel The Keeper of Antiquities. This work, translated into English by Michael Glenny, gives several ominous hints as to the development of the Stalinist terror and its impact in remote Alma-Ata.
Dombrovsky had begun publishing literary articles in Kazakhstanskaya Pravda by 1937, when he was imprisoned again — this time for a mere seven months, having the luck to be detained during the partial hiatus between the downfall of Yezhov and the appointment of Beria.
Dombrovsky's first novel Derzhavin was published in 1938 and he was accepted into the Union of Soviet Writers in 1939, the year in which he was arrested yet again. This time he was sent to the notorious Kolyma camps in northeast Siberia, of which we are given brief but chilling glimpses in The Faculty of Useless Knowledge.
Dombrovsky, partially paralysed, was released from the camps in 1943 and lived as a teacher in Alma-Ata until 1949. There he wrote The Monkey Comes for his Skull and The Dark Lady. In 1949, he was again arrested, this time in connection with the campaign against foreign influences and cosmopolitanism. This time, he received a ten-year sentence, to be served in the Tayshet and Osetrovo regions in Siberia.
In 1955, he was released and fully rehabilitated the following year. Until his death in 1978, he lived in Moscow with Klara Fazulayevna (a character in The Faculty of Useless Knowledge). He was allowed to write, and his works were translated abroad, but none of them were re-issued in the USSR. Nor was he allowed abroad, even to Poland.
The Faculty of Useless Knowledge (Harvill), translated by Alan Myers the sombre and chilling sequel to The Keeper of Antiquities took eleven years to write, and was published in Paris in 1978.
A widespread opinion is that this publication proved fatal. The KGB did not approve of the work, and it was noted that the book had actually been finished in 1975. Dombrovsky received numerous threats over the phone and through the post; his arm was shattered by a steel pipe in the course of an assault on a bus, and he was finally attacked and severely beaten in the House of Literature. He died about a month and a half later.
An account about Dombrovsky written by Armand Maloumian, a fellow inmate of the GULAG, can be found in Kontinent 4: Contemporary Russian Writers (Avon Books, ed. George Bailey), entitled "And Even Our Tears."
Dombrovsky was the son of Jewish lawyer Joseph Hedal Dombrovsky and Russian mother. Yury fell foul of the authorities as early as 1932, for his part in the student suicide case described in The Faculty of Useless Knowledge. He was exiled to Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan where he established himself as a teacher, and which provided the setting for his novel The Keeper of Antiquities. This work, translated into English by Michael Glenny, gives several ominous hints as to the development of the Stalinist terror and its impact in remote Alma-Ata.
Dombrovsky had begun publishing literary articles in Kazakhstanskaya Pravda by 1937, when he was imprisoned again — this time for a mere seven months, having the luck to be detained during the partial hiatus between the downfall of Yezhov and the appointment of Beria.
Dombrovsky's first novel Derzhavin was published in 1938 and he was accepted into the Union of Soviet Writers in 1939, the year in which he was arrested yet again. This time he was sent to the notorious Kolyma camps in northeast Siberia, of which we are given brief but chilling glimpses in The Faculty of Useless Knowledge.
Dombrovsky, partially paralysed, was released from the camps in 1943 and lived as a teacher in Alma-Ata until 1949. There he wrote The Monkey Comes for his Skull and The Dark Lady. In 1949, he was again arrested, this time in connection with the campaign against foreign influences and cosmopolitanism. This time, he received a ten-year sentence, to be served in the Tayshet and Osetrovo regions in Siberia.
In 1955, he was released and fully rehabilitated the following year. Until his death in 1978, he lived in Moscow with Klara Fazulayevna (a character in The Faculty of Useless Knowledge). He was allowed to write, and his works were translated abroad, but none of them were re-issued in the USSR. Nor was he allowed abroad, even to Poland.
The Faculty of Useless Knowledge (Harvill), translated by Alan Myers the sombre and chilling sequel to The Keeper of Antiquities took eleven years to write, and was published in Paris in 1978.
A widespread opinion is that this publication proved fatal. The KGB did not approve of the work, and it was noted that the book had actually been finished in 1975. Dombrovsky received numerous threats over the phone and through the post; his arm was shattered by a steel pipe in the course of an assault on a bus, and he was finally attacked and severely beaten in the House of Literature. He died about a month and a half later.
An account about Dombrovsky written by Armand Maloumian, a fellow inmate of the GULAG, can be found in Kontinent 4: Contemporary Russian Writers (Avon Books, ed. George Bailey), entitled "And Even Our Tears."
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 24, 2026
Le narrateur, Hans, nous conte l’histoire de son père, le professeur Maisonnier, anthropologue qui étudia et colectionna des crânes simiesques. Ses théories de l’origine de l’humanité ne collent pas avec la doctrine nazie sur les races. Or sa ville est occupée par les nazis et le professeur va devoir résister aux attaques de l’occupant.
Ce livre se lit comme une enquête policière même si la cohérence est parfois difficile à trouver.
Dombrovski, envoyé en camp plusieurs fois, sous couvert de la critique du nazisme, nous parle de tous les régimes totalitaires.
Ce livre se lit comme une enquête policière même si la cohérence est parfois difficile à trouver.
Dombrovski, envoyé en camp plusieurs fois, sous couvert de la critique du nazisme, nous parle de tous les régimes totalitaires.
Displaying 1 of 1 review