The Monkey Comes for Its Skull: A Novel

Yuri Dombrovsky (1909–1978) — a prose writer, poet, and “great character of the era,” who went through several arrests and camps. Author of the novels “The Monkey Comes for Its Skull,” “The Keeper of Antiquities,” and “The Faculty of Useless... Things.” Jean-Paul Sartre called him “the last classic of the 20th century.”

The novel “The Monkey Comes for Its Skull” was started by Yuri Dombrovsky in 1943, and in 1949, the text along with its author was arrested; it was published only after Stalin's death. The place and time are some European country in the pre-war and post-war years, engulfed in fascism, where “everything alive, rational, and thinking is declared subject to extermination.” Hans Mezonye, a journalist and son of an anthropologist, tries to resist the catastrophe that could plunge the world into darkness again a few years after World War II.

“"The monkey's paw has hung over Europe… If things continue at this pace, in a month a living Pithicanthropus will come to your institute's office for its skull, but in its hands, it will have not a club, but an automatic rifle." And the monkey comes, while three intellectuals sit in armchairs, smoking pipes and discussing the friendship of Schiller and Goethe...”



3 reasons to buy this book
1. The novel reminds us of what a person should be. It allows one to look at oneself from the outside and ask the question: “What would I do in the heroes' place?” 2. A story that reflects on the phenomenon of Nazism and the post-war rehabilitation of war criminals. The author examines the psychological motives of the characters' actions to understand what path heroes or traitors take. 3. A prophetic book showing how soon a society that has plunged into the abyss prefers not to remember it and to silence the uncomfortable past.