''Yawning Heights'' () is the

first published novel A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to pu ...

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

philosopher

Alexander Zinoviev Alexander Alexandrovich Zinoviev ( Russian: Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Зино́вьев; 29 October 1922 – 10 May 2006) was a Soviet philosopher, writer, sociologist and journalist. Coming from a poor peasant family, a ...

. Zinoviev chose to satirize and ridicule Soviet society in ''Yawning Heights'', presented as the city / nation of Ibansk. The novel has been compared to the writings of

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish writer, essayist, satirist, and Anglican cleric. In 1713, he became the Dean (Christianity), dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and was given the sobriquet "Dean Swi ...

Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, mathematician, photographer and reluctant Anglicanism, Anglican deacon. His most notable works are ''Alice ...

, and others. Everyone in ''Yawning Heights'' is named Iban Ibanovich Ibanov, so each is instead referred to by a descriptive name, rather than their proper name. Some are recognizable. In the book, one of the characters writes a satirical novel critical of his society. The character knows that the Brothers (

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

) are searching his house to find his controversial book. This represents the level of

metafiction Metafiction is a form of fiction that emphasizes its own narrative structure in a way that inherently reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and story ...

Satire

As a

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure o ...

ian, Zinoviev was able to reduce many features of Soviet communism to what he calls "scientific laws". The book is also filled with numerous paradoxes and logical twists, ''à la'' ''

Catch-22 ''Catch-22'' is a satirical war novel by American author Joseph Heller. It was his debut novel. He began writing it in 1953; the novel was first published in 1961. Often cited as one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century, it ...

''. The book begins with a logically reflexive definition: a preface claims that the book details the result of an experiment. The preface identifies the purpose of the experiment: "to uncover those who disapprove of its implementation, and to take the appropriate measures". One satire in a late chapter is that, after conquering the whole world in the Great Ibanskian Kissoff, the leaders of Ibansk discover another nation, Sub-Ibansk, whose inhabitants live underground beneath Ibansk and subsist on the sewage generated by Ibansk.

Title

The title of the book is a pun on a cliche of Soviet ideological propaganda, describing communism as the "Shining heights". The words "yawning" and "shining" in Russian are identical, except for the first letter: a ''Z'' in the case of "yawning", and an ''S'' in the case of "shining". The "yawning" in the generally accepted translation of the Russian title does not refer to a "yawn" but rather to its meaning as in "yawning abyss". To capture the paradoxical nature of the Russian title, someone suggested that a better translation would have been "abysmal heights" (the primary meaning of ''abysmal'' derives from ''abyss'').

English translation

''Yawning Heights'' was translated into English by Gordon Clough and published in 1979.

References

1976 Russian novels Soviet novels Russian speculative fiction novels {{1970s-specf-novel-stub