Today I went to Brighton Beach for the first time in months to pick up a copy of Dmitrii Bykov's new novel Orfografiya (publisher's page, in Russian; if it's unavailable, here's the Google cache). As soon as I read the review by Nikita Eliseev, I knew I had to have it; not only is it a historical novel about a period I'm fascinated by (the Russian Revolution and civil war), it focuses on the orthographic reform of 1918! (In the alternative history of the novel, the Bolsheviks abolish orthography rather than reforming it.) Indeed, the main character's name is Yat', the name of a prerevolutionary letter that was eliminated by the reform (and replaced by e). Other main characters are writers of the time, like Gorkii and Khodasevich. OK, it's almost 700 pages long and the author calls it an "opera in three acts," which in other circumstances would put me off, but this I can't resist.
Posted by languagehat at July 19, 2003 09:15 PMI remember seeing something about this a little while ago. Lemme know if it's any good!
Posted by: Chris at July 21, 2003 01:17 AMI may regret asking: how do you abolish orthography?
Posted by: Anton Sherwood at July 25, 2003 05:35 PMAbolish (I should have said) the rules of orthography; ie, spell as you like. (An unlikely attitude for Bolsheviks, I grant you, but perhaps in the world of the novel spelling rules are seen as a bourgeois preoccupation. I haven't started it yet.)
Posted by: language hat at July 26, 2003 11:17 AM