Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel.

KUZNETSOV, Anatoly. Translated by David Floyd .

$12,500.00

Item Number: 143812

London: Jonathan Cape, 1970.

First English uncensored edition of soviet writer Anatoly Kuznetsov’s most acclaimed work in its complete, unredacted form. Octavo, original cloth, cartographic endpapers. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title page in the year of publication, “To Mr. M.G. Millard – with very best wishes, in appreciation for the invaluable help he has given me. A. Anatoli 14/XII/1970 London.” Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Exceptionally rare with no other signed examples traced at auction.

Anatoly Kuznetsov's internationally acclaimed novel Babi Yar records his experiences in Nazi-occupied Ukraine during World War II. Anatoli was 12 years old in September 941 when the Germans took over from the Bolsheviks in Kiev. Beginning with 70,000 Jews, they proceeded to murder hundreds of thousands of the city's population in the ravine of Babi Yar, deporting thousands more to Germany by slave labor. With his grandparents, mother, and his cat, Anatoli survived two years of slaughter, terror and starvation, recording everything he witnessed and heard about the massacre of Babi Yar in a notebook. Kuznetsov's novel was born out of these notes and was first published in Yunost magazine in 1966 and then in shortened form in 1967. It was not until Kuznetsov's defection to the UK in 1968 that he could publish he preferred, unredacted, edition in book form complete with passages that were highly-critical of the Soviet regime.