Full Description
Man and His Surroundings irreverently explores Soviet and post-Soviet identity, politics, and history. In what Iskander himself calls the book's seminal novella, the narrator meets a man who believes himself to be Lenin, thawed out after decades of cryogenic storage. The narrator endures a phantasmagorical account of what "Lenin" thought and did during the October Revolution of 1917 and how another revolution is imminent. In another novella, the narrator tells of a nationally renowned fencer as the fencer sits at a neighboring table, discussing the impossibility of equality on earth, while his son pesters him for ice cream. The novellas enrapture the reader with their humor and impart a better intuitive understanding of the Soviet cultural heritage and mindset.
Contents
Translator's Introduction
Instead of a Foreword
1. Lenin at the Amra
2. The Rapier
3. The Hunting Hawk
4. The Beauty of Norms, or a Boy Waits for a Man
5. The Light of the Twilight Youth
6. A Sea of Charisma
7. Palermo—New York
8. The Old Men's Bender on the Sea
9. Lenin and Uncle Sandro
