PhiloSophia: Istanbul 1921

<p>The fifth volume of the bie bao series presents Ilya Zdanevich’s fictional autobiographical writings based on his one-year stay in Istanbul in 1921. It contains the three final chapters of <em>PhiloSophia</em>, a massive novel he wrote in 1930, depicting an obscure revolutionary plot evolving around Hagia Sophia. This volume also presents the first two chapters of Zdanevich’s 1929 epistolary novel <em>Letters to Morgan Philips Price</em>. The ‘letters’ are addressed to his journalist friend and comrade Morgan Philips, with whom they wrote a joint anti-war editorial published in the Manchester Guardian in 1916.</p> <p>Both <em>PhiloSophia</em> and <em>Letters</em> are translated and edited by Thomas Kitson, who has described these writings’ mood as “pro-Soviet melancholy.” Illustrated with Zdanevich’s plans of Hagia Sophia and other Byzantine churches, the volume concludes with a dizzying text by Odesa-born artist Nikolay Karabinovych, remixing PhiloSophia to the tune of the “new architecture of collective security” of today’s wars and empires. Inspired by Zdanevich’s paradoxical graphomania, Karabinovych’s intervention undoes centuries-long imperial narratives.</p>