KATAEV KATAYEV, Valentine Kataiev (Intro. Stephen Graham,trans by L. Zarine)

Presumed first edition, first printing. A very nice bright copy in original attractively illustrated (artist unknown) unclipped dust-wrapper. 254pp.. Clean and tight. Dust-wrapper torn and chipped at edge, sunned with small mark to spine. Book itself very good, very slightly cocked. Clean and tight. Валентин Петрович Катаев. Valentin Kataev, Soviet novelist and playwright whose lighthearted, satirical treatment of post-revolutionary social conditions managed to evade the strictures of the official Soviet style. The present title, published as Растратчики or Rastratchiki in 1926, described as “a warmly humorous, Gogolian, picaresque novel” was his major work of the 1920s. Robert Russell in Cornwell (1998) p.421.