The Island of Crimea

The Island of Crimea by Vassily Aksyonov is a work of late Soviet dissident fiction presenting an alternate history in which Crimea is an island rather than a peninsula. In Aksyonov's novel, the White Army successfully repels the Bolshevik invasion in 1920, allowing the territory to develop into a prosperous, Westernized enclave of old Russia on the Soviet doorstep, a scenario that mirrors the geopolitical relationship between Taiwan and mainland China. Written shortly before Aksyonov's forced exile to the United States following the publication of his dissident anthology Metropol, the novel offers a sharp critique of totalitarianism and the corrosive appeal of Soviet ideology even to those who should know better. First American edition, and the first English translation, by Michael Henry Heim.

Hardcover. First American Edition, First Printing. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. New York: Random House, 1983. ISBN: 0394524314. #10002.
Fine in fine dust jacket.