About the Novel:

Set in the future, Reconstructing Mayakovsky revisits the past to make sense of our chaotic present. Inspired by Vladimir Mayakovsky, the Russian Futurist poet who killed himself in 1930 at the age of thirty-six, the novel imagines a world where uncertainty and tragedy have finally been eliminated through technology. Reconstructing Mayakovsky takes a radical approach to historical fiction. While extensively researched and historically accurate, it tells the story of Mayakovsky’s life in the context of our present-day fears and fantasies about the future.

Caroline Leavitt, author of Girls in Trouble and Come Back to Me, offers this assessment: “The past and the future intersect in a wild ride of a novel that’s part Thomas Pynchon, part Steve Erickson, and totally original. Szilak’s dazzling book has revolution at its dark heart, and genius in its soul. She’s created a world where all realities just might be virtual and the hunger for change or for love can’t be denied. Smart, complex, provocative, moving and addictive.”

About the Site:

Employing a Futurist/Dada aesthetic, the site privileges ready-made, open source code, “found” objects, and thought games over technological wizardry. In the “Audiopodcast” section, downloadable recordings of the novel (narrated in turn by a machine-manipulated voice and a raw, shockingly human voice) are presented in a navigable “soundscape” of audio clips. In “Mechanism B,” viewers can read the novel through ten randomly selected words, presented along with their frequency. The “Archive” relates themes and references in the novel to video, text, image and website links. It can be searched randomly or by tags (see “all tags.”) Clicking on word-bearing tile performs a real-time Google image search for that word. T

"Illya uses a variety of medias and methods, including manifestos, texts, animations, podcasts, music, and data visualisations. The result is a engrossing multilayered digital sci-fi/fantasy/biographical ‘novel’, well worthy of the artist who inspired it." Chris Joseph, UK-based digital writer, co-author Inanimate Alice