‘PILNIAK, Boris’ [pseud. Boris Andreevich VOGAU].
Kitaiskaia povest’ [A Chinese tale].
Moscow and Leningrad, Gosizdat, 1928.
8vo, pp. 96, [2], [2 (advertisements)]; light marginal browning to title, but a very good copy in the original publisher’s decorated boards, some wear to spine.
First edition. A visit to the Far East in 1927 gave Pilniak material for a number of works, such as the present one, but controversy back in Russia grew over an earlier story, Povest’ nepogashennoi luny (The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon, 1926, which had strongly suggested that Stalin was responsible for ordering the death of Mikhail Frunze, a leading military figure in the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917), and Pilniak was finally arrested in 1937. He was assassinated on 21 April 1938.
