Overview
While living in exile in Berlin, Viktor Shklovsky fell in love with Elsa Triolet (the "Alya" of this novel). Shklovsky was in the habit of sending Elsa several letters a day, a situation she accepted under one condition: he was forbidden to write about love. Zoo, or Letters Not about Love is an epistolary novel born of this constraint, and although the brilliant and playful letters contained here cover everything from observations about contemporary German and Russian life to theories of art and literature, nonetheless every one of them is indirectly dedicated to the one topic they are all required to avoid: their author's own unrequited love.Synopsis
While living in exile in Berlin, Viktor Shklovsky fell in love with Elsa Triolet (the "Alya" of this novel). Shklovsky was in the habit of sending Elsa several letters a day, a situation she accepted under one condition: he was forbidden to write about love. Zoo, or Letters Not about Love is an epistolary novel born of this constraint, and although the brilliant and playful letters contained here cover everything from observations about contemporary German and Russian life to theories of art and literature, nonetheless every one of them is indirectly dedicated to the one topic they are all required to avoid: their author's own unrequited love.
Library Journal
The Russian Shklovsky's own infatuation with a woman led to this epistolary novel set in 1922 in which a man is permitted to write to a woman named Alya under the condition that he not talk about love. During the subsequent correspondence, the author makes observations about Russian life, art, literature etc., all of which under the surface really are about love. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.