Page 40 - Making Books

82.
Eduard Limonov
Сэр Лимон и история с Узбеками
Sir Limon and the story with the Uzbeks
Moscow: Goppe, 2009
420 x 300 mm. 44 pages
Edition: 7, copy № 5/7 signed by the author

Eduard Limonov (born 1943 as Eduard Savenko) is a writer, poet, and
publicist. Probably because of his radical political views, Limonov had
to emigrate to New York in the 1970s, where he worked for a Russian-
language newspaper. In 1980 he left for Paris and was granted French
citizenship in 1987. His Russian citizenship was restored in 1992 and
Limonov returned to Moscow. Limonov’s writing and poems contain
many pornographic descriptions and lean towards punk subculture
and radical politics. In 2001 he landed in prison because of his political
views, but was released on parole after two years. Sir Limon and the
history of the Uzbeks is a collection of poems that are illustrated with
zincography’s by Goppe. All poems in this collection bear similar ‘what
if’ titles. The collection opens with ‘What if my granddad were Hans-
Christian Andersen’ (ill.1), which is followed by ‘What if my father were
Mussolini’ (ill.2), : ‘What if my sister were Princess Diana’ (ill.3), and
‘What if my mother were Krupskaia’ (Lenin’s wife). The difficulty Goppe
had to overcome in his illustrations is the textual fluidity of reality and
socio-political phenomena that Limonov put into his verses.

ill. 1

ill. 2 ill. 3

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