Zoo, or Letters Not About Love (Dalkey Archive Essentials)

The book marks a 2024 edition in the “Dalkey Archive Essentials” series, bringing this classic work into a modern, accessible translation.

While living in exile in Berlin, the acclaimed literary critic Viktor Shklovsky fell deeply in love with Elsa Triolet. He began sending her many letters every day — though she agreed only under one condition: he was forbidden to write about love. The result is Zoo, or Letters Not about Love, an epistolary novel constructed under that constraint. What emerges instead is a series of vivid, playful, incisive letters that comment on German and Russian life, art, literature, exile, identity, and longing — all while the unspoken truth of unrequited love looms in the background.

“Shklovsky revitalizes the traditional epistolary novel.” — Choice