--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> --- Peter Lavelle <untimely_thoughts at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Radzinsky is a kook. Awful - it is not scholarship
Agreed, utter crap, not worth reading, except for his
access to sources that others don't have and which
can't be checked or trusted.
>
> I just bought Zinoviev's Russkaya Tragediya, which
> looks great -- although his politics are wacky, he
> really is a brilliant novelist. Katastroika was
> hilarious ("Long Live Feudalism, Glorious Future of
> All Mankind!"), and Yawning Heights, which I haven't
> read, is supposedly first-rate.
>
Also The Radiant Future, very funny. That was when he was an anti-Communist dissident. I met him in those days and we butted heads -- I was redder in them days, defending Gorby. Now Z is a neo-Communist reactionary, having realized too late what was lost. He wouldn't like Gorby any better now, but today because MG was the traitor who destroyed the USSR, etc. Only I am sure he'd put it in a funbnier way.
Z is also an absolutely first rate technical logician, with real contributions in multi-valued logics (where sentences can be other than just true or false). Wonder whether that helps his work as a novelist.
jks
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