Fone Kvas or The Sucker

  • The rediscovery of a great author who captured the madness of the Stalinist terror with the power of literature
  • Translation rights with KiWi except for French and Russian
  • English sample translation by Donald Rayfield available

translated by: Irina RastorguevaThomas Martin

"Fone Kvas is a timeless, true document of literature about the real and timeless pain of human beings" - FAZ

A distinguished scientist is arrested in a provincial Soviet-Ukrainian town for belonging to an organization he has never heard of. He is threatened with torture, and suspects he will not be able to endure it. So he develops the idea of pretending to be the "Fone Kvas" (a Yiddish term for a fool or "idiot") in front of the NKVD officers, making wild and implausible "confessions" in the hope of being convicted quickly, but then appealing and showing that everything he has confessed to is completely untenable technically and scientifically, so that he will eventually be released for "erroneous" arrest.

He puts his plan into action. He tells of legendary acts of sabotage, draws convoluted diagrams. The more insane and bizarre his explanations become, the more pleased his investigator appears.

And in the end, everything turns out quite differently than the defendant expected. The insane reality of Stalinist terror will far surpass the fabricated fantasies of the "Fone Kvas".

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Sample Translations
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Italy: Adelphi / Netherlands: Standaard

  • Publisher: Galiani-Berlin
  • Translated by: Irina RastorguevaThomas Martin
  • Release: 02.11.2023
  • ISBN: 978-3-86971-288-8
  • 208 Pages
  • Author: Georgi Demidow
Fone Kvas or The Sucker
Georgi Demidow Fone Kvas or The Sucker
Walentina Demidowa and Julia Sinjakowa
© Walentina Demidowa and Julia Sinjakowa
Georgi Demidow

Georgy Demidov (1908-1987), was a Soviet physicist who grew up in what is now Ukraine and worked in Kharkov, was arrested there in 1938 and interrogated for six months at NKVD headquarters. He survived fourteen years of Gulag on the Kolyma River. After his release, he began to write about his experiences. In 1980, the KGB confiscated all his manuscripts and destroyed his typewriters (without which he could not write, as his fingers had been frozen in the Gulag). Demidov died believing that his entire life's work had been destroyed. Only after the end of the Soviet Union were his works returned to his daughter and published for the first time in Russia.

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