Zoo, or Letters Not about Love

By Viktor ShklovskyTranslated by Richard SheldonIntroduction by Richard Sheldon ISBN:  9781628974966 Pub Date: 7/16/2024 While living in exile in Berlin, the formidable literary critic Viktor Shklovsky fell in love with Elsa Triolet. He fell into 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. Reviews “Shklovsky revitalizes the traditional epistolary novel.”—Choice Biographical Information  Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984) was a leading figure in the Russian Formalist movement of the 1920s and had a profound effect on tw