The Strugatskys’ Doomed City: Not Quite My Kind of Dystopian Town

My best news about reading Град обреченный (available in English as Andrew Bromfield’s The Doomed City, Chicago Review Press), by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, is that I finished it, all 444.25 pages. After attempting at least four or five other Strugatsky books (some of which I nearly finished), this is the first Strugatsky novel I’ve gotten through in Russian. The less good news is that The Doomed City may be a page-turner but I still feel a touch underwhelmed. That said, I found The Doomed City fascinating in certain ways. For starters, a lot of people from various countries and times have been spirited away to a city in an otherworldly place where mysterious mentors occasionally visit. People all somehow even understand each other’s languages. The sun is shut off and turned on. Baboons mysteriously appear. And so on and so forth. The book is loaded with sociopolitical and sociocultural material, and there’s a clear sense of mock(ing) Sovietdom. Scariest: the political experiments feel relevant now, too. Perhaps best of all, the book is far edgier than any other Strugatsky books I’ve tried, without the corny humor (sorry, but I’ve never enjoyed the Brothers’ humor) but with obscenities as well as less of a cookie-cutter science fiction feel. Oddly, I may want to reread it, for details: there’s just far, far too much to sort out in just one reading, making one reading feel like a very rough draft.

The Doomed City focuses on the career(s) of Andrei Voronin, depicting his progression through various professions over the course of the book, beginning as a garbage collector and ending as a presidential advisor and operative. (Changes of profession are forced.) Andrei, who was an astronomer back on Earth, is a pretty unsympathetic character: not only is he a Stalinist but his political gig is under a president who served Nazi Germany; Andrei does a nasty turn to Izya Katzman, the nicest, most thoughtful person in the book, who also happened to work for Joint; and he tends to think of women (who, eek!, barely even appear in The Doomed City—perchance this is a reason it’s doomed?) using terms like “slut” and “whore.” Given that the presence of all these people in the City is an experiment—it’s actually an Experiment and “The Experiment is the Experiment” is repeated over and over again—I think part of the Strugatskys’ point here (put simplistically) is to offer a portrait of a thoroughly unsympathetic (that word again!) person who starts as an astronomer, a scientist who should have distant vision, but is blinded by stubbornness and proximity to power and comfort.

There’s a intriguing sense of camaraderie among these disparate characters from all over the world, particularly when they gather to eat, drink, and even dance. It’s even interesting to watch the progression of the parties along with Andrei’s career: the core of the guest list remains the same but things get fancier and more official. The happiest person in the book, though, seems to be Wang, who risks to remain a garbage collector. Wang knows what he wants and understands himself, something that eludes Andrei, who realizes his thought processes are inconstant and whose mentor tells him, “You’ve just had understanding hammered into you, and it makes you feel sick, you don’t understand what the hell you need it for, you don’t want to know about it…”

In the end, I found The Doomed City more interesting and fun to read—the novel’s suspenseful and the Strugatskys draw Andrei’s psychology and actions pretty clearly—than to reflect on. I admit that’s partly because there were a few bits I didn’t quite get. I’m glad, for example, that Marat Grinberg’s review for Los Angeles Review of Books decodes the novel’s ending, prefaced by, “What transpires is very cryptic; one needs to be a fan of David Lynch to unravel the mystery.” Despite being a Lynch fan who’s seen lots of his films, not to mention all of Twin Peaks at least twice, in Russian (voiced over, mind you!) and in English, I still, dense of head, needed Grinberg’s help. Grinberg sums up the relationship between Andrei and Izya, including how Izya helps Andrei handle understanding better. (Alas, in the novel there’s a meandering three-page paragraph involved.) I realize that I’m more to blame than the Strugatskys for needing remedial assistance from Grinberg—I was caught up in the suspense of the novel and read crucial passages too quickly—but a lot of important material, including that crucial meandering paragraph and Andrei’s speech to statues during an expedition, felt more contrived and tacked on than it could or should have. Of course this is something that bothers me in lots of books: inorganic philosophy. I’d much rather see philosophy through characters’ actions and reactions than through long speeches. A case in point is Wang’s refusal to dump his garbage handling work.

I found a different, far simpler, form of wisdom about the book when I looked up Dmitry Glukhovsky’s introduction to Andrew Bromfield’s translation, which is partially available on Google Books. Glukhovsky thinks the Strugatskys modeled the City on a place where they both lived: Leningrad, which has also been the site of many experiments and whose residents also refer to it as “the City.” Andrei is from Leningrad.

The Grinberg and Glukhovsky angles on The Doomed City feel equally apt to me. Perhaps what feels aptest right now, though, is that despite (no, likely because of) my annoyance with Andrei’s bigotry and his willingness to join Heiger’s unsavory regime, the book feels like an important warning about the ramifications of chaos and lack of knowledge, and the authoritarianism that perpetuates them. I hope Glukhovsky continues to be correct that “In the West there is simply no need for the kind of science fiction that we had: you already have enough space without it to discuss the fate and fortunes of your own countries and your own peoples.” Therein, I suspect, lies the strange pull of The Doomed City.

Disclaimers: The usual.

Up Next: Sergei Kuznetsov’s Teacher Dymov, Andrei Volos’s Shpakovsky’s Hat, a lovely short story cycle, more books in English, and upcoming award news. The backlog’s handy since I just started a fifth reading of War and Peace and don’t plan to blog about it this time around.

How Far Away Is 2042? & Misc.

Though Vladimir Voinovich’s (Москва 2042) Moscow 2042 doesn’t feel quite as fresh now as it did when it came out in the ‘80s – will people anywhere watch TV in 2042? – it’s still plenty fun, and it still feels painfully relevant. I think the last name of one of the characters, “Karnavalov,” sums up a lot about the book: this satirical, dystopian novel written by an exiled writer certainly serves up a nice dose of carnival and, of course, absurdity.

So what happens? In 1982, Kartsev, a Russian writer living in Germany, boards a special Lufthansa flight that takes him to 2042 Moscow. Some of Kartsev’s acquaintances from his years in the Soviet Union – including Sim Simych Karnavalov, a reclusive writer who rather resembles Solzhenitsyn – express interest in his travel. I don’t think it will surprise many readers when they reappear in 2042 Moscow. Moscow in 2042 is ruled by a leader called the Genialissimus whose real name (sort of) is Berii Ilich Vzroslyi. His first two names refer to past leaders, and his last translates to “adult.” The names are part of the book’s fun: other characters include Dzerzhin (from Dzerzhinskii) and Gorizont (horizon).

Voinovich works a lot into less than 400 pages. There’s Kartsev’s writerly jealously of Karnavalov, a 2042 regime that combines religion with politics (hmm…), very funny scenes of collective writing processes, reflections on reality, and lots of poop humor. I’ll take Voinovich’s writing about “secondary” material over Sorokin’s any day, particularly since most of it – such as Kartsev finding himself in the “Third Kaka” – makes a point without being ponderous. Citizens in 2042 turn in their waste so they may eat… and there are multiple mentions of that staple Russian food, sausage. Moscow 2042 also includes references to classic literature, a special showing of Dallas, word play in the names of communist institutions, and a special isolation for Moscow. I don’t want to write more, lest I spoil the fun. I’ve always enjoyed Voinovich and would certainly recommend Moscow 2042 to anyone who enjoys dystopian satire, a bit of time travel, and humor both high and low. Moscow 2042 is available in translation.

The Big Book Award announced today that Viktor Pelevin’s t won its readers’ choice award; 8,615 readers voted over the Internet. Evgenii Kliuev’s Андерманир штук (Something Else for You) was second-most popular among readers; the book was a little too messy and wandering for me to love but I’m sure it won readers over with its magical atmosphere and positivity (previous post). Mikhail Gigolashvili’s Чертово колесо (The Devil’s Wheel), which I did love, took third (previous post). The jury’s selections will be named tomorrow.

My blogger colleague Marie Cloutier, a.k.a. Boston Bibliophile, interviewed me as part of her November Russo-Biblio Extravaganza. I thoroughly enjoyed answering her questions but it’s been even more fun reading her takes on some Russian books I should read one of these days. I’m especially looking forward to her thoughts on Moscow 2042.

Up Next: I’m still mulling over Dovlatov’s underwhelming Zone and working my way through Baldaev’s Drawings from the Gulag, a unique and important book that I’ve been reading in small installments. I’m continuing the theme by rereading Solzhenitsyn’s (In) The First Circle. More immediately: I’ll report on the Big Book Award winners tomorrow…

Sausage photo credit: adauzie, via sxc.hu

Where the Grass Isn’t Greener: Rubanov’s Chlorophyllia

The publisher of Andrei Rubanov’s Хлорофилия (I’ll call it Chlorophyllia) makes a pretty big promise on the novel’s back cover: “Эта книга взорвет ваш мозг” – “This book will blow your mind.” My head is still very much intact, thank you, but Chlorophyllia was an absorbing book, just the thing for hot summer reading.

Chlorophyllia describes 22^nd-century Moscow, where tall plants have taken over patches of free soil. The grass is so tall that people need to live dozens of storeys up to have natural light. Lower floors are dank and mildewy, and their residents eat the pulp of the plants. They don’t need to eat anything else, and not everybody works. China does the labor and even pays to use Russian territory. Most Russians have chip implants so the nanogovernment (so-called for its use of technology) can keep track of people, paying subsidies for behaving, and deducting for misdeeds.

Among citizens, nobody owes anybody anything – this is repeated many times – though there is a barter system among one group of people. Some people, like Savelii, the book’s main character, live on sunny floors and work, but they often (ab)use plant pulp, too, in processed forms that enable them to eat meat and drink alcohol so their addiction goes unnoticed. They often give themselves away, though, by drinking lots of bottled water and hogging sunlight by windows. The plant pulp and pills are illegal but generally regarded as safe (apologies to the FDA).

Savelii and his fiancée are magazine journalists; Savelii is promoted to editor. There are plenty of details about a tabloid culture where everyone’s famous for a few minutes thanks to reality TV, and Rubanov mentions some of our contemporaries. There’s even a street named for Russian TV executive Konstantin Ernst. That humor seems a little too easy.

What’s most important is that things fall apart, as things are wont to do in this type of book. And what type of book is it? I guess I’d call it a dystopian novel with satire and tinges of morality play thrown in. Russian critic Lev Danilkin thinks it might be closest to a dystopia- parody of disaster novels and social novels, among other things, and I can see his point: there is plenty of disaster and plenty of social commentary.

On the social side, the idea of receiving stipends for doing nothing, along with not having to eat, reminds of some familiar slogans (variations are here), from the Bible to TANSTAAFL. Rubanov describes various vegetative states that people live in: a young “grasseater” woman from the 21^st floor that Savelii picks up for a ride (and, predictably, sees again later, for sex) is plant-like in her empty-headedness. That feels cozy for Savelii, the working pill taker.

Some of the novel’s characters and turns of events felt contrived, schematic, genre-driven, and/or undeveloped to me, particularly toward the end, and Rubanov’s conclusions about what it means to be human felt pretty shopworn, too. (This may be another point for Danilkin on parody…) Oddly, those shortcomings weren’t fatal, and I still enjoyed Chlorophyllia.

I guess that’s partly because I almost always like a peculiar dystopia. It’s also because Chlorophyllia addresses the celebrification of just about everything (Lindsay Lohan’s manicure, anyone?) and people begin to resemble, yes, potted plants with limited intellectual needs. Still, there’s an irony at the root of Chlorophyllia that makes me a little uneasy: the novel leaves me with the feeling that I’ve read something entertaining but pretty light, not a pithy future classic that steers the brain away from that dreaded vegetative state... Of course I may just be too serious, too much of a ботаник: botanik, the Russian word for botanist, can be translated as geek, nerd, or dork.

Reading level for nonnative readers of Russian: Not too difficult, 2 or 2.5/5. Reads easily.

Rubanov’s first novel, Сажайте, и вырастет, is available in English as Do Time Get Time. Andrew Bromfield translated the book, an autobiographical novel about white collar crime and punishment.

Illustration credit for cross-section of woody stem: Jeffrey Winterborne's Hydroponics - Indoor Horticulture, via Wikipedia's Plant Morphology page.

Two from Terts: “Liubimov” and “Pkhents”

It’s difficult to believe the same person -- Andrei Siniavskii (pseudonym Abram Terts) -- wrote the busy novella Любимов (Liubimov or The Makepeace Experiment) and “Пхенц” (“Pkhents”), a restrained short story. Both pieces contain the science fictionish and/or grotesque elements Terts thought reflected life better than realism but, stylistically, the stories are opposites.

Liubimov reminds me of a pint of ice cream that’s so overloaded with the conflicting flavors of chips, nuts, and other marginally edible stuff that it’s hard to taste the ice cream itself. On the crude plot summary level, Liubimov is a dystopia of sorts concerning a bicycle repairman who leads a small city using hypnotism. In my favorite scene, unprestigious foodstuffs take on luxe flavors: water becomes alcohol, canned red peppers become beef, and cucumbers become sausage.

It’s too bad Terts piled on so many genre elements, literary devices, and tangents – folk tale, religion, unclean forces, footnotes, and on and on – that the story and its underlying questions about truth, lies, and history nearly get lost. With its spirits, inventive language, and fast pace, I can’t argue with the blurb in my book that says Liubimov descended from Gogol, Bulgakov, and Platonov. It has some wonderful material, but it’s a little too antic and crowded for my taste.

Staying with the dessert theme: if “Pkhents” were ice cream, it would be a rich vanilla with a twist of high-quality fudge or peanut butter. I read the story as an afterthought because it followed Liubimov in my book. It’s a beautifully crafted story about someone with a hunchback who lives in Moscow under false documents. I don’t want to say too much and spoil the surprise of the story – I knew what it was and wish I hadn’t – but I will say that the story is very, very touching in showing how loneliness affects us. “Pkhents” is simple and quietly funny, too, with some fantastic остранение (defamiliarization). The story is oddly mesmerizing, and I recommend it very highly.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the role these stories played in Terts’s show trial for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda in 1966. Certain works published in the West -- Liubimov, along with On Socialist Realism and The Trial Begins – underpinned the indictment against Terts. Although “Pkhents” didn’t figure into the indictment, in his closing plea Terts invoked a line from the story about being different. He then commented, in the translation given in Max Hayward’s book On Trial, “Well, I am different. But I do not regard myself as an enemy; I am a Soviet man, and my works are not hostile works.” Terts was tried along with writer Iulii Daniel (Nikolai Arzhak) (previous post on Arzhak). Neither pled guilty. Both were convicted: Terts received a seven-year sentence, and Daniel received five years.

Max Hayward's On Trial
Abram Terts on Amazon

Russian Reading Challenge 2: Platonov's “Foundation Pit”

Andrei Platonov’s Котлован (The Foundation Pit) was a perfect Russian Reading Challenge selection: I read the first 30 pages several years ago but got stuck. I’m glad I stuck with it this time because, though I still found it quite difficult, this short novel is very rewarding.

The Foundation Pit, written in 1929-1930, is an allegory of the era of collectivization: workers digging a pit for a foundation also find themselves digging, in effect, a collective grave. They take part in the collectivization campaign, too, banishing kulaks by sending them away by raft.

Form and content are inseparable in The Foundation Pit, and Platonov draws on language and themes found in divergent genres, mixing elements of folk tales, carnival, existentialism, and socialist realism to create a dystopia so painful and surreal that I feel almost as if I’ve lived there.

Despite the inherent tragedy of The Foundation Pit, some passages were laugh-out-loud absurd – the behavior of collectivized horses stands out – but I thought others plodded, perhaps because they were so familiar and reminiscent of “real” socialist realism. Other chunks of text jarred to good effect: an orphaned girl taken in by the workers speaks in violent, revolutionary terms, demanding death of kulaks.

What sets The Foundation Pit apart from other dystopian novels – and most other fiction – is Platonov’s creativity with the Russian language. Language is the foundation upon which the book is built, with Platonov’s diversity of linguistic registers reflecting changes in society. The Foundation Pit depicts on every level – from words to characters’ actions – untenable visions of a socialist future in a place where truth and rationality are losing their meaning.

Joseph Brodsky says in this (Russian) piece, which evidently appears as an afterward to an English-language edition of The Foundation Pit, that the book is untranslatable. (I find a lot of irony there!) He cites as one reason Platonov’s depiction of a nation that effectively becomes a victim of its own language. Obviously not all of Platonov’s words in The Foundation Pit have equivalents in a language like English – the content of “энтузиаст,” for example, differs tremendously on a cultural level from our “enthusiast.”

But I think Brodsky may underestimate the talents of translators, readers, and Platonov himself. Many of Platonov’s unique phrases translate elegantly enough into English to read well. Robert Chandler and Geoffrey Smith’s translation beautifully captures the mood and meanings of the novella’s unique first paragraph. Much later in the book, as I translate it, a bear “sang a song with his jaw.” Even culturally laden phrases that don’t translate this easily into English can still display Platonov’s ability to use repetition or word combinations that force the reader to (re)consider meaning.

Even if I don’t quite agree with Brodsky about translating Platonov – particularly after reading Robert Chandler’s crackling versions of Platonov in The New Yorker and the paragraph cited above – I think his definition of surrealism sums up The Foundation Pit very neatly. He calls Platonov the first surrealist, arguing that surrealism is not an aesthetic category but rather (as I translate it) “a form of philosophical rage, a product of the psychology of dead end.”

In the end (whether it’s dead or not) what I find most interesting about The Foundation Pit is that, to be blunt, I didn’t often enjoy reading it… but I can’t stop thinking about it. I even have thoughts of rereading it. I’ve enjoyed Platonov’s short stories much more because they feel peculiar and, perhaps even alienated, without conveying utter desolation. But I love a literary puzzle, and that’s what The Foundation Pit feels like. I may be back in a few years.

Summary: The Foundation Pit is one of the most difficult books I’ve read in recent years, but it’s worth the effort if you enjoy dystopia or writing that depends on both form and content to convey its messages. Platonov layers the book with far more themes than I’ve mentioned here: I felt like I barely touched on their significance in this, my first reading. I should add that my first attempt at reading The Foundation Pit was my introduction to Platonov. Reading several short stories between then and now helped me feel more comfortable with his style.

Cross-posted at Russian Reading Challenge

Of Mice, Golubchiki, and Tolstaya

Tat’iana Tolstaya’s Кысь (The Slynx) is a novel of posts: postmodern, post-Soviet, post-apocalyptic. It describes a Russian settlement, formerly Moscow, that was bombed back to, roughly, the Stone Age. The wheel was just reinvented, candles light huts, and people barter in mice, a valuable food source. The government is repressive, and its leader claims to have written all of what we know as Russian literature. Scribes copy those texts onto birch bark.

Of course there’s much more, including mutations that cause humans to grow tails, coxcombs, and claws, as well as a couple of fairly typical intellectuals who’ve survived hundreds of years to remember the old days and put up a statue of Pushkin. Tolstaya’s main character, a scribe named Benedikt, a fellow with a tail, becomes enamored with books, but he’s a bit of a blockhead so reads everything from poetry to crafts books without truly differentiating their meanings.

Despite loving dystopian novels and views of the future, I found that Tolstaya’s imaginative descriptions fail to become compelling: she creates a vivid setting but skimps on characters. Instead of creating real people, she tosses out figures to represent positions. Her primary focus is on language.

Tolstaya’s linguistic pyrotechnics in The Slynx have earned her praise from some Russian reviewers, but I found them distracting, just as I find extensive use of regional accents distracting in American novels. Characters in The Slynx make more mistakes with Russian grammar and pronunciation than typical Russian 101 students because they're barely literate, and Tolstaya invents new words to fit her “reality.”

Tolstaya’s preoccupation with language doesn’t end with spelling and grammar. The book is arranged like a primer, with each chapter named for a Cyrillic letter, some obsolete. The book is more about language, cultural literacy, and misinterpretation than anything else but these cultural aspects of the book are probably more difficult to feel in translation than in the original: two New York Times reviews (here and here) do not even allude to them.

Tolstaya quotes frequently from Russian literature, fairy tales, and other cultural materials, making the book resemble a parlor game for catching literary allusions. Tolstaya’s Big Point is stated in multiple locations: people must understand their primer basics, both for reading and life. Books are more than just collections of letters.

I agree. But the problem – and bitter irony – here is that the novel depends on superstructure plus familiar messages that, despite the originality of the setting, feel recycled from previous dystopian novels and history itself. Those don’t magically add up to good fiction any more than 26 Roman alphabet letters equal Shakespeare.

The Slynx has fans among Russian and Western readers who like wordplay and dystopias, but this reader grew impatient with its literary devices. I wanted to like The Slynx but the book's occasional moments of literary clarity and satirical humor – some of which are excellent – don’t compensate for hundreds of pages dominated by heavy-handed, self-conscious technique and messages.

SUMMARY: Recommended for readers who enjoy postmodern books where form and linguistic tricks trump or determine content. A very deep knowledge of Russian literature is a big plus. Not recommended for readers squeamish about the idea of eating mice. (Disclosure: we dispose of mice trapped in our garage and attic.) People with little patience for exclamation marks and sound effects (Eeeeeeee!!!) in fiction may also experience anxiety while reading this book.

Mentioned in this posting:
Slynx on Amazon

A Little Existentialism -- Two Short Novels by Vladimir Makanin

How many languages have a diminutive for "existential"? There is at least one: Russian, with экзистенциалка (ekzistentsialka). It's not important that the word is rare and a Google search only pops 23 results in the nominative case. It exists. And why shouldn't it? Some of us have tender feelings for stark, dark novels and movies about life, death, and the choices they force.

If you've been yearning to read a couple of very accessible existential novellas, I have two suggestions: Vladimir Makanin's Лаз (Escape Hatch) and Долог наш путь (The Long Road Ahead). Escape Hatch was nominated for the first-ever Russian Booker Prize in 1992, and it has been neatly combined with the complementary Long Road for a volume of translations. (This piece describes the book nicely, but contains a lot of spoilers for The Long Road. This review also has a few spoilers.)

Escape Hatch begins with a cat standing at a door, blocking her master by not deciding whether to stay in or go out. The paragraph sums up a lot: the cat's person, Kliucharev (the root, kliuch, means "key"), is also torn between two places. He lives on the earth's surface, where life is dark, hungry, and violent, but uses a hole to climb underground, where lighting is natural and people enjoy good food and wine.

The hole's opening shrinks during the course of the book, making passage more dangerous. Meanwhile, Makanin examines the stark dichotomies of Kliucharev's life and choices: up or down, dark or light, crowd or individual, freedom or entrapment, life and death. In one scene, Kliucharev squeezes below ground, landing in a cafe, where he is offered a nice meal, a shot, and, most important, the chance to listen to conversation about Dostoevsky and the undesirability of happiness based on the unhappiness of others. He considers himself an intellectual, so the conversation causes him to come to life, writes Makanin, like a fish returning to water.

Escape Hatch is oddly suspenseful, whether Makanin shows Kliucharev navigating a crowd, a deserted street, or the hatch. Makanin also includes some nice touches, like comparing Kliucharev to a worm as he crawls through the dirt... years before genomic sequencing showed how much human and worm genes hold in common. The book's setting, though Russian, is left vague, and it's unclear what caused a societal breakdown.

The Long Road Ahead has a much different feel. It is less schematic than Escape Hatch, and has a dystopian bent: there haven't been wars for 200 years, and society lives with the comforting idea that food is synthetic, eliminating the need for killing, say, cows. Of course not all is as it seems, and Makanin's nameless main character, a man on a business trip, becomes caught up in situations that make him feel trapped.

I normally don't take well to postmodern devices that twist plots and narration, but Makanin uses one in The Long Road in a way that, I think, works because it doesn't distract from the meaning of the story. The ending combines dread, hope, and strange beauty in a way that crystallizes Makanin's ideas.

The pleasure of reading Makanin's fiction is that he successfully demonstrates his philosophy and ideas through plot and characters, rather than lectures, making even the strangest actions and places feel quite real. Makanin's unpretentious approach provides stories that encourage, rather than coerce, the reader to explore layers of meaning.

These two short novels fit nicely with comments that Makanin made about his philosophy of life and death during a 2004 interview on the Russian talk show Ночной полёт (Night Flight). Although Makanin spoke about his newer book Испуг (Fear), about an old man's love for a much-younger woman, his talk about the fear of death and loneliness complemented Escape Hatch and The Long Road. He also reinforced the optimism that I felt when reading his work, particularly The Long Road. When people become fearful of life, Makanin suggested that they simply live their lives. Prodded by the moderator to clarify, he said that we should love but also remember that we will die. Something about Makanin was endearingly sincere.

Two other translations of Makanin are available in English:

-Утрата (The Loss), a volume containing a novella and two short stories.
-Стол, покрытый сукном и с графином в середине (Baize-Covered Table with Decanter), which won the Russian Booker in 1993. This novel is about interrogation; it creates an atmosphere that felt, to me, far more claustrophobic than the tunnel in Escape Hatch. Although I had looked forward to reading it, I just couldn't get into Table. I'll try again someday, but I think Table suffered by comparison to the imaginative novellas I read: Table felt less interesting because interrogation has, unfortunately, been all too common a theme in Russian life and literature.

Vladimir Makanin Books on Amazon