84×108/32, hard cover, ill., 456 pp., 2004
ISBN 5-86793-334-2

Move Quietly, Speak Quietly is not so much an autobiography as a phantasmagorical essay based on autobiographic material. Virtually the only Russian nonconformist artist to be repressed specifically for his art, Sysoyev spent two years in prison for the ‘creation and distribution of pornographic images’. The author’s very biography is somewhat phantasmagorical: prior to his arrest, Sysoyev spent four years avoiding imprisonment, thus disproving the myth of the omnipotent authorities and all-knowing penal officials. Like Sysoyev’s drawings, his prose skilfully combines the coarse and the refined, the satirical and the grotesque. Complex and entertaining, this multi-layered book is illustrated by the author himself.

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