Yawning Heights

Everyone in Yawning Heights is named Iban Ibanovich Ibanov, so each is instead referred to by a descriptive name, rather than their proper name. Some are recognizable. In the book, one of the characters writes a satirical novel critical of his society. The character knows that the Brothers (KGB) are searching his house to find his controversial book. This represents the level of metafiction.

Satire

As a logician, Zinoviev was able to reduce many features of Soviet communism to what he calls "scientific laws". The book is also filled with numerous paradoxes and logical twists, à la Catch-22. The book begins with a logically reflexive definition: a preface claims that the book details the result of an experiment. The preface identifies the purpose of the experiment: "to uncover those who disapprove of its implementation, and to take the appropriate measures".

One satire in a late chapter is that, after conquering the whole world in the Great Ibanskian Kissoff, the leaders of Ibansk discover another nation, Sub-Ibansk, whose inhabitants live underground beneath Ibansk and subsist on the sewage generated by Ibansk.

Title

The title of the book is a pun on a cliche of Soviet ideological propaganda, describing communism as the "Shining heights". The words "yawning" and "shining" in Russian are identical, except for the first letter: a Z in the case of "yawning", and an S in the case of "shining".

The "yawning" in the generally accepted translation of the Russian title does not refer to a "yawn" but rather to its meaning as in "yawning abyss". To capture the paradoxical nature of the Russian title, someone^[who?] suggested that a better translation would have been "abysmal heights" (the primary meaning of abysmal derives from abyss).^{[citation needed]}

English translation

Yawning Heights was translated into English by Gordon Clough and published in 1979.^[1]

References

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