Envy

A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL <p/>One of the delights of Russian literature a tour de force that has been compared to the best of Nabokov and Bulgakov Yuri Olesha's novella Envy brings together cutting social satire slapstick humor and a wild visionary streak. Andrei is a model Soviet citizen a swaggeringly self-satisfied mogul of the food industry who intends to revolutionize modern life with mass-produced sausage. Nikolai is a loser. Finding him drunk in the gutter Andrei gives him a bed for the night and a job as a gofer. Nikolai takes what he can but that doesn't mean he's grateful. Griping sulking grovelingly abject he despises everything Andrei believes in even if he envies him his every breath. <p/>Producer and sponger insider and outcast master and man fight back and forth in the pages of Olesha's anarchic comedy. It is a contest of wills in which nothing is sure except the incorrigible human heart. <p/>Marian Schwartz's new English translation of <i>Envy</i> brilliantly captures the energy of Olesha's masterpiece.