The latest addition to my website is Vladimir Sharov‘s Репетиции (Rehearsals). This is a thoroughly original book which starts in seventeenth century Russia and ends some time after the Russian Revolution. We follow the religious upheavals in the time of Patriarch Nikon and his attempt to put on a mystery play of all the Gospels, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alisa Ganieva‘s Жених и невеста (Bride and Groom). As the title tells us, the story is, to a great extent, about marriage. Patya and Marat are both from the same town in Dagestan, though they do not know one another. Both are working in Moscow at the beginning … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Igor Eliseev‘s One-Two. This novel tells the story of two conjoined girls and their life as children in a brutal Soviet institution and then their life in post-Soviet Russia where the capitalist system turns out to be just as cruel as the Soviet system, as they are hired … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Victor Pelevin‘s Ампир В (Empire V). This is the usual Pelevin post-modern satire on Russia and its ruling class but takes as its basis the idea of vampires. That the Russian ruling class (and, indeed, other ruling classes) are vampires is not, perhaps, a terribly original idea but … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Victor Pelevin‘s S.N.U.F.F. (S.N.U.F.F.). This is another glorious post-modern romp through Russia and its foibles and, indeed, lots of other places and things and their foibles, which Pelevin inevitably mercilessly mocks. It is set in the future where the two main countries are Big Byz(antion), clearly based on … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Oleg Kashin‘s Роисся вперде (Fardwor Russia!). Kashin is a Russian journalist who has been very critical of the Russian government and has been beaten up more than once for his pains. This book is a satire, but not too vicious, on the Russian system, with corruption and violence … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Victor Pelevin‘s Поколение «П» (UK: Babylon; US: Homo zapiens), another gloriously funny and wicked satire from Pelevin. This one is nominally about the advertising industry but goes well beyond that. Our hero is Babylen Tatarsky (his first name comes from a combination of Baby Yar and Lenin and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Victor Pelevin‘s Чапаев и Пустота (UK: The Clay Machine-Gun; US: Buddha’s Little Finger). This is another wonderful, witty, post-modernist novel from Pelevin. Pyotr Voyd, the narrator, is not sure when he lives. He is a commissar in 1919 to Vasily Chapayev, Soviet hero and subject of the book … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alexander Chayanov‘s Путешествие моего брата Алексея в страну крестьянской утопии (The Journey of My Brother Alexei to the Land of Peasant Utopia). This is a 1920 novel set in 1984 (yes, thirty-nine years before George Orwell got there), written by a well-respected Soviet agricultural economist, whose political views … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Victor Pelevin‘s Жизнь насекомых (The Life of Insects). This is a thoroughly original book which takes as its premise the idea that insects can also have human form and behave and act like humans. We have mosquitoes who travel the world, looking for the ideal blood to suck, … Read more