Dr. Chizevsky’s Chandelier
Daniel Elkind
Repeater Books 2025
Ostensibly about dissident anarchists who disappeared in the early days of the Soviet Union, Daniel Elkind’s Dr. Chizhevsky’s Chandelier extends far beyond its initial lament about the lost details about the “buttons and zippers” of those whose stories went unrecorded. It swells into larger musings on lost things, ranging from the extinct mastodons who spread curiosities such as the osage orange to the lost memories of Elkind’s childhood in a country that no longer exists.
The book defies genre mixing elements of memoir, essay, archeology, and fiction to craft a world woven of artful sentences and patterns hunted and glimpsed.
As it does so, it defies genre mixing elements of memoir, essay, archeology, and fiction to craft a world woven of artful sentences and patterns hunted and glimpsed. The book teaches all of us who have been cast adrift to weave tiny, obscure details into myths that become our home. As Elkind so movingly writes,“sometimes what is needed is “a book that tells the bones that someone is looking for them.” —Eireene Nealand
