The Tsar of Love and Techno in Around the World in 80 Books

Nov 15, 2015 Rachel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2015-reads, short-stories

I just finished reading the last page, so let me take a deep breath and fight back the tears before I start this review...!

2015 has been a wonderful year of books for me, and I'm so glad to end this year with this amazing book. Indeed, another excellent collection of short-stories, and I have certainly enjoyed a few other fantastic collections this year, including The Wonder Garden and Fortune Smiles (both highly recommended). After reading this collection, I almost question what makes a short- ...more

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May 28, 2015 Sam rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed, 1-contemp-literary, 3-short-stories, setting-authoritarian-regime, setting-russia-ussr, read-2016, tournament-of-books16

It didn’t disappoint, it didn’t disappoint! At all. Phew! I went into this collection with such high hopes but wasn’t sure whether these short stories could live up to them. Silly doubts. The lyrical writing that evoked such a satisfying mix of emotions in Marra’s debut, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, is found here. From the perspective of a range of characters living in a changing Russia, pre- and post-USSR breakup, Marra again teases out the ‘funny’ way that fate works, the complexity of ...more

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Jan 01, 2017 Ryan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017, fiction

Love the way these stories connect. Lovely start to my reading for the year.

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Jan 29, 2019 Tony rated it it was ok

Shelves: historical-fiction, setting-europe, short-stories, unfinished

In 1997, the graphic designer and art historian David King published a groundbreaking book called The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia. It must have served as a primary source for the first of the linked series of nine short stories in this book, in which a failed painter works as a "correction artist" for the state and starts to inserts his dead brother's face in his work, beginning with a mediocre landscape by a (real) 19th-century Chechen painter In 1997, the graphic designer and art historian David King published a groundbreaking book called The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia. It must have served as a primary source for the first of the linked series of nine short stories in this book, in which a failed painter works as a "correction artist" for the state and starts to inserts his dead brother's face in his work, beginning with a mediocre landscape by a (real) 19th-century Chechen painter.

From this 1930s Leningrad launching pad, the stories move up to a bleak industrial city in the Arctic Circle spanning the decades to the more-or-less present, then to Grozny and Chechnya during the Second Chechen War, before circling back to the industrial city and then modern-day Leningrad/St. Petersburg and then to an ending time and space it would be a spoiler to reveal. The painting from the first story drifts through the book, as do various characters and their relations, to form a kind of thematic throughline about family, love, truth, and history.

It's a cleverly constructed weave (albeit one that's been done plenty of times before), and the writing is quite polished. But at no time was I ever fully sucked into the stories or the lives of the characters. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there was just something flat about it all. To a large degree, I found that there wasn't much that was fresh or gave me a different insight on the places and people in the stories. So many of the elements are well-known to anyone who's vaguely familiar with the past century of Russian and Soviet social history, and others arguably simply perpetuate well-worn stereotypes about Russian society.

There's also kind of an odd borrowing and blending of source material with the author's imagination. For example, the painter whose landscape links the stories was real person, but never painted landscapes. Two of the stories take place in the Siberian nickel-mining city of "Kirovsk." There is a small city north of the arctic circle of that name, but not in Siberia. Instead, the city described in the stories is very clearly the Siberian city of Norilsk -- so why change the name? The fourth story, "A Prisoner of the Caucuses" is updated take on the classic Tolstoy short story "The Prisoner of the Caucuses" (not to be confused with the Pushkin poem of the same name that came fifty years earlier). To be clear, I have no issue with authors playing with influences and remixing cultural products, but this book just never really worked for me. ...more

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Oct 11, 2015 Katie rated it really liked it

Shelves: male-author, ___asia, _russia

The Tsar of Love and Techno is one of those books that I wanted to read again as soon as I finished, not so much because I loved it, but more because I feel like I missed to much. The book is described as interconnected stories, but they are so heavily interconnected, that is felt more like a novel to me. I missed a lot because I kept forgetting who people were and how they played into the bigger picture.

I heard the author of this book speak at a book festival a few weeks ago, and he said that h ...more

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