Muzyka Igraet Tak Veselo. Fel’etony, Parodii, Druzheskie Poslaniia, Rasskazy, Memuary, Dnei Minuvshikh Anekdoty [Signed/Inscribed by Author]

Moscow: Sovetskii Pisatel', 1990. Softcover. First edition; 5 x 7 3/4; pp. [3], 6266, [4]; glossy pictorial wraps; minor creasing to lower corner of front cover and a small nick to fore-edge; mild age-toning to pages; portrait frontis; near fine condition. Signed by the author with a lengthy and amusing inscription.Zinovii Papernyi (1919-1996) was a scholar, critic, writer, and one of Russia's most widely-known literary parodists. In 1975, his entry on Boris Pasternak in "The Great Soviet Encyclopedia" was the first article in contemporary Russian history to publicly express sympathy and admiration for the prosecuted poet and writer. His scathing humor and his style of "ridding literature of superficial stuff and inflated authority" which have been beautifully portrayed in his current book of satires and anecdotes had him expelled, at one time, from the Union of Soviet Writers.