Back to Blog
The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya7/8/2023 ![]() ![]() And Benedikt, a Golubchik employed as one of the numerous scribes recording the dictator’s ostensible works, naively incarnates both his people’s passive servitude, and-once he’s introduced to forbidden books by “Oldeners” who deny Fyodor Kuzmich’s virtual divinity-their urge toward enlightenment and freedom. A ravenous mythical beast, the slynx, further impairs the wretched lives of oppressed workers (“Golubchiks”), prowling the ruined city’s dark outskirts. ![]() Moscow is now called Fyodor-Kuzmichsk, in honor of its seldom-seen dictator Kablukov, a paternalistic egotist who is reputed to have invented every useful object now known to man and to be the author of the classic literary works he blithely plagiarizes. The setting is what once was Moscow, two hundred years after “the Blast” that leveled the metropolis, leaving a frozen wasteland clogged with trash and populated by a mixture of “normal” human beings and grotesque mutants. A strikingly imagined first novel (after stories: On the Golden Porch, 1989 Sleepwalker in a Fog, 1992) skillfully creates a frightening and perversely funny postnuclear world. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |