Fuck off America
Fuck Off, Amerika is the title of the German edition of an autobiographical novel by Eduard Limonow . Limonow wrote the work in New York in 1976 after being expelled from the Soviet Union to the USA in 1974 .
content
In New York the poet Limonov, expelled from the Soviet Union, lives in a shabby dump and lives on welfare and odd jobs. When his wife Helena leaves him, he wanders through the streets of the city, gets involved with members of the Trotskyist Workers' Party as well as homosexual escapades, and meets drifters, homeless people and male hustlers .
Publishing and translations
Limonow found a publisher for his novel only in France . The book was published there in 1980 under the title Le poète russe préfère les grands nègres . In 1982 Scherz Verlag published the first German edition translated by Hans Brink under the title Fuck Off, Amerika . In 1983 Random House published the English version under the title It's Me, Eddie . In 1990 the Glagol publishing house first published the novel in the Soviet Union under the title Это я, Эдичка . In 2004 the publishing house Kiepenheuer & Witsch published a paperback edition newly translated by Jürgen Bavendam.
History of impact and reception
The book made Limonow internationally known, the use of an often obscene language and the depiction of several pornographic scenes attracted a lot of attention . The work was interpreted as a “dazzling indictment against America and the false appearance of freedom”, but also as “the story of a great love that breaks in the turmoil of time”. In Russia the novel reached millions of copies.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Limonov's "It's Me, Eddie" and the Autobiographical Mode by Karen Ryan-Hayes , published in 1993 in The Carl Beck Papers , accessed November 5, 2014
- ↑ Blurb on the website perlentaucher.de , accessed on November 5, 2014
- ↑ Monumental Foolishness , article by Keith Gessen at slate.com