false 310722 7 Two hundred years after civilization ended in an event known as the Blast, Benedikt isn't one to complain. He's got a job—transcribing old books and presenting them as the words of the great new leader, Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe—and though he doesn't enjoy the privileged status of a Murza, at least he's not a serf or a half-human four-legged Degenerator harnessed to a troika. He has a house, too, with enough mice to cook up a tasty meal, and he's happily free of mutations: no extra fingers, no gills, no cockscombs sprouting from his eyelids. And he's managed—at least so far—to steer clear of the ever-vigilant Saniturions, who track down anyone who manifests the slightest sign of Freethinking, and the legendary screeching Slynx that waits in the wilderness beyond. Tatyana Tolstaya's <i>The Slynx</i> reimagines dystopian fantasy as a wild, horripilating amusement park ride. Poised between Nabokov's <i>Pale Fire</i> and Burgess's <i>A Clockwork Orange</i>, <i>The Slynx</i> is a brilliantly inventive and shimmeringly ambiguous work of art: an account of a degraded world that is full of echoes of the sublime literature of Russia's past; a grinning portrait of human inhumanity; a tribute to art in both its sovereignty and its helplessness; a vision of the past as the future in which the future is now. 3535 2000 The Slynx (New York Review Books Classics) total:141|5:42|4:56|3:29|2:5|1:9| 141 540 329 33 4 13 false false Thu Feb 12 20:11:28 -0800 2009 Sat Feb 14 23:36:58 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 2 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Jun 22 13:26:50 -0700 2007 Fri Jun 22 13:27:24 -0700 2007
Ah, those Russian writers -- those crazy, drunken, angst-filled, delightful Russian writers! Mention the phrase "Russian literature" to most Americans, and you're likely to see the...more...]]> 5 2 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Sat Aug 25 16:55:48 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 27 17:23:24 -0700 2007
Part folk tale, part sci-fi yarn (not unlike Tarkovsky's Stalker, but cranked up on crystal meth) Tolstaya's language is as giddy a...more...]]> 4 1 false true Tue Apr 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Nov 04 11:39:32 -0800 2008 Tue Apr 14 16:55:24 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Tue Dec 18 13:04:52 -0800 2007 Fri Dec 07 11:15:33 -0800 2007 Fri Dec 07 11:23:07 -0800 2007
"That is, if you catch a female. Because the male, boiled or not, it doesn't matter. People didn't used to know this, t...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Apr 28 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 15 09:52:02 -0700 2009 Fri May 01 09:30:10 -0700 2009 Set in Russia after "The Blast" has d...more...]]> 5 0 false true Sun Feb 15 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 12 13:08:30 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 17 06:49:21 -0800 2009 more...]]> 1 1 false false Fri Sep 19 06:23:09 -0700 2008 Tue Aug 19 14:26:48 -0700 2008 Fri Sep 19 06:23:09 -0700 2008 3 1 false false Thu Feb 12 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 01 17:20:57 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 13 20:42:05 -0800 2009 0 1 false false Wed Mar 14 11:25:09 -0700 2007 Wed Mar 14 11:25:09 -0700 2007 4 0 false false Thu Mar 05 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 05 21:00:06 -0800 2009 Wed Mar 04 23:05:40 -0800 2009
This dystopia happens after The ...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Aug 10 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 22 23:12:15 -0700 2008 Sun Aug 10 15:49:24 -0700 2008 The Slynx, it is incorrigible! You've never heard someone go on at such length on mice and how fire looks and the sorts of things girls can put in their hair... it is just like how life used to be when all you had to do was figure out whether or not to make a statue in your ...more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Feb 04 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jul 14 23:34:05 -0700 2008 Thu Feb 19 12:09:00 -0800 2009 The Slynx, a story of Moscow set two hundred years after The Blast destroyed civilization, life is not quite what it seems to be. The people ...more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Jul 20 16:30:57 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 20 16:32:54 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Fri Jun 12 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon May 04 19:11:48 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 15 12:12:14 -0700 2009 http://tinyurl.com/cctyoo

Fantastic! One of the best books I've read in weeks! Just barely fits into the "...more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Oct 07 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 03 10:37:57 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 13 16:03:50 -0700 2009 more...]]> 1 0 false false Tue Jan 06 13:43:49 -0800 2009 Tue Dec 16 15:18:17 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 06 13:43:49 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Wed May 27 06:55:58 -0700 2009 Wed May 27 06:57:02 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Sun Jul 06 08:26:21 -0700 2008 Sun Jul 06 08:27:02 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Aug 26 12:14:53 -0700 2008 Fri Sep 05 16:55:52 -0700 2008 After "the Blast", and what's left. Serious and humorous.
Pessimistic in...more...]]>