The Foundation Pit

| 3.93 | 4,308 ratings and reviews

Recommended by Robert Chandler, Joshua Cohen, and 2 others. See all reviews

Ranked #76 in Russian

In Andrey Platonov’s The Foundation Pit, a team of workers has been given the job of digging the foundation of an immense edifice, a palatial home for the perfect future that, they are convinced, is at hand. But the harder the team works, the deeper they dig, the more things go wrong, and it becomes clear that what is being dug is not a foundation, but an immense grave.

The Foundation Pit is Platonov’s most overtly political book, written in direct response to the staggering brutalities of Stalin’s collectivization of Russian agriculture. It is also a literary... more
Buy on Amazon

Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of The Foundation Pit from the world's leading experts.

Robert Chandler Platonov I first encountered when I spent a year in Voronezh in the early 70s. I was on an exchange scholarship there and I had never heard of Platonov but it happens to be the city where he was born and somebody brought me a Soviet published collection of his work. About half his work was published in Soviet times. So, this made an immediate impression on me and I recognised it was something unusual. Back at home I started reading all the works that hadn’t been published in the Soviet Union, the surreal satire and extraordinary wit, and the creativity with language. The language immediately... (Source)

Joshua Cohen Platonov’s novel concerns the destruction of a Russian village or town and the digging of a foundation pit for a vast communist housing-block that the reader slowly realises will be the size of, or just will be, the world. (Source)

Similar Books

If you like The Foundation Pit, check out these similar top-rated books:

Learn: What makes Shortform summaries the best in the world?

Learn More