Sterling's Distraction

Chris Doss chrisd at russiajournal.com
Thu Jan 24 09:49:19 PST 2002


On the subject of quality SF, a book people might be interested in checking out, assuming it's been translated net, is Tatyana Tolstaya's novel Kys. It's set in post-apocalyptic Moscow, but is actually an allegory about 1990s Russia in which the city is ruled by an evil dwarf who uses the fear of evil marauding monsters called "Chechens" to enslave the populace. It almost won a national book award recently.

Would be pretty hard to translate I think -- Tolstaya's a very experimental writer. The book has one chapter for each letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.

She is Leo Tolstoy's granddaughter or great-granddaughter, I forget which.

Chris Doss The Russia Journal ---------------------------

jeffrey fisher said:


>without trying to make this list an sf discussion list any more than
>it's a religious studies list, i am curious, since we're on the >topic,
>what any listmembers who've read him think of bruce sterling . . . >the
>novel "distraction", in particular.

At different turns, pessimistic and optimistic (generally ends on an optimistic note). His short stories tend to display quite a bit of cynicism

re. politics and states. It's been a bit since I read any of his stuff ("Distraction" being the latest one, a few years ago), though, so take this with a grain of salt.

Todd



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