Dr Chizhevsky's Chandelier: The Decline of the USSR and other Heresies of the Twentieth Century

— —

Dan Elkind

Dr Chizhevsky's Chandelier

The Decline of the USSR and other Heresies of the Twentieth Century

Dan Elkind

$29.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

Repeater Books
23 September 2025

Biography: science, technology & engineering; European history

A work of experimental nonfiction that spotlights the so-called Undesirables of recent history, forced into martyrdom and infamy.

A work of experimental nonfiction that spotlights the so-called Undesirables of recent history, forced into martyrdom and infamy.

Daniel Elkind's hybrid-genre debut, Chizhevsky's Chandelier is a nonfiction experiment that tells the story of A.L. Chizhevsky, the inventor and father of the field of heliobiology, who - like his hero Galileo - was punished for daring to suggest that human history revolved around the sun.

This expansive narrative of historical reckoning stages a confrontation between factions of American anarchists, disciples of the Bab in 19th-century Persia, Jewish baseball players, and the quixotic quest to grow enormous chickens. Nested within is the story of the last Soviet generation (the ""Tetris generation"") and its dreams and illusions. In biographical chapters recalling his experience as a refugee from Soviet Russia, Elkind finds echoes of the exile of Emma Goldman and other political Undesirables from America to their ""native"" land in 1919, then in the throes of revolutionary fervor.

The result of this literary experiment is an irreverent and deeply personal investigation into what it means to record and remember in today's oversaturated world, where all of the stories we tell ourselves have been turned inside-out.

By: Dan Elkind
Imprint: Repeater Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 197mm, Width: 130mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9781915672797
ISBN 10: 1915672791
Pages: 250
Publication Date: 23 September 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Daniel Elkind was born in Moscow in 1984. He is the author of Theory and Failure- Some Latter-Day Curse Tablets and Reflections on the Nature of the League (Gauss PDF). His work has appeared in Lapham's Quarterly, the LA Review of Books, the Believer, Public Domain Review, and elsewhere. A former New Yorker, he is now based in Atlanta.