[COVER DESIGN BY NIKOLAI AKIMOV] Fal'shivomonetchiki [i.e. Counterfeiters]

Leningrad: Academia, 1926. [4], 625 pp., 1 ill. 15x12 cm. In original illustrated cardboards. Good, extremities bumped, double title page detached, pencil notes on the blank leaf.
First edition. One of 4100 copies. Very rare.
Cover design brilliantly depicts a portrait of the author produced by avant-garde stage designer and director Nikolai Akimov (1901-1968). He started to design theater performances in Kharkiv (Wilde's 'The Star Child' by Meyerhold) but he moved to Russia. With enrollment in VKhUTEMAS, Akimov got to know theater directors Nikolai Evreinov, Georgii Kryzhitskii and Nikolai Petrov. The artist collaborated with them, contributing to early Soviet theaters and cabaret. At the same time, he began to design books for the publishing house 'Academia'. Little later, as an independent director, he staged an experimental 'Hamlet' (1932) that shocked Soviet critics and was forbidden. Still, he was continuing
This book can be regarded as one of the experiments of the 1920s. The novel by French writer Andre Gide (1869-1951) contained his alter-ego, as well as a considerable number of bisexual or gay characters. It was translated to Russian for five-volume collected works. In fact, Academia published the only three volumes in the strange order: 5, 1 and 4. This way 'Counterfeiters' became the first book.
In the late 1920s, Soviet press considered Gide "a friend of Soviet Union" while he sympathized the communism in fear of Nazi. Gide visited the USSR in 1936 and later declared his impressions in the book 'Return from the U.S.S.R.'. Due to a sharp anti-Soviet content, critics immediately turned away from Gide. His published works were banned and new prose wasn't translated until the 1990s.

No copies in the Worldcat.