Sholokhov, Mikhail

Virgin Soil Upturned

Moscow, Russia: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1960. First UK Edition Thus. Hardcover. “Mikhail Sholokhov is rightly considered both in his own country and abroad the foremost Soviet novelist of his generation. Born in 1905, in a working Cossack family, Sholokhov’s most impressionable years were those of the Russian Revolution and Civil War, which he has described with penetrating insight….In his second major work, ‘Virgin Soil Upturned,’ (the second volume of which is now in preparation), Sholokhov turns to the great remolding of Russian life that followed the Revolution—the collectivization of agriculture” (Abridged quotation from Front Flap copy). Offered here is the remarkably translated (and admittedly well-architected) short novel, “Virgin Soil Upturned” by Mikhail Sholokhov (1905-1984), the celebrated Russian novelist. Notably, it was for this work (“Virgin Soil Upturned”) that Sholokhov received the “Lenin Prize,” — a distinction which necessarily shrinks in importance when put beside the legendary laurel awarded him in 1965, none other than the Nobel Prize in Literature (for his “Collected Works…published in eight volumes between 1956 and 1960”). Translated, as indicated on copyright page, by one “R. Daglish” and designed by (the similarly untraceable) “S. Telingater.” Hardcover in illustrated boards & trimmed-edge dust-jacket: a First UK Edition Thus of 1960 (though not explicated as such on copyright page). Published by the “Foreign Language Publishing House” in Moscow; complete with ‘barren plains-themed’ dust-jacket variation (a variation which--as the state of our research on the topic presently intimates--is native to an (as of yet) un-cataloged number of copies from the same (or, at worst, from a sequentially adjacent) impression. Book in fine condition with only moderate shelf-wear, bumping to front, back covers & corners; a few exhibits of minute, correspondent bumping to same. Dust-jacket in very good condition with moderate-to-pronounced shelf-wear, rubbing, bumping to front, back covers & spine-edge of dust-jacket, esp. at/along fine-edges of same; closed tears, light creasing, chipping & bumping to same; as earlier relayed, jacket is clipped at all corners of flaps at interior, though we at TMB surmise that this is “as issued,” and to be distinguished from a typical “price-clipping” as we would otherwise note it, here. Fine / Very Good. [Item #5174]

Price: $45.00