Rachel Hurn, writer for the The New Yorker‘s feature, The Book Bench, attends the launch party for Calypso Editions’ inaugural title and discusses the book:
I’d never read Tolstoy’s parable before hearing it read aloud at Pacific Standard (by Boris Drayluk, together with the poets Polina Barskova and Ilya Kaminsky), and I was moved by the simple answer Tolstoy gives to his question. How much land does a man need? At the end of Pakhom’s struggle, when the sun has set over the hill and he has realized that “my work is all lost,” he receives his allotment: three arshins (seven feet)—just enough to lay himself down into the soil.