The Slynx

By Tatyana Tolstaya
Translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell

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 The Slynx reimagines dystopian fantasy as a wild, horripilating amusement park ride. Poised between Nabokov's Pale Fire and Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, The Slynx 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.

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Reviews

It is impossible to communicate adequately the richness, the exuberance, and the horrid inventiveness of The Slynx.
— John Banville, The New Republic

The Slynx, with its comical, tragical, post-nuclear holocaust setting, is a satirical blast, a linguistically inventive glimpse of a future nobody wants to see.
— Alan Cheuse, All Things Considered

A postmodern literary masterpiece.
— The Times Literary Supplement

With the publication... of The Slynx, [Tolstaya] will... be granted a place alongside her exalted countrymen Nabokov, Bulgakov, and Gogol...
— Bookforum

Also see:

Ice By Vladimir Sorokin Translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell Ice is at once a work of fantasy, prophecy, parody, and wild paranoia. It is the finest work to date of a writer of proven genius and growing international renown, whose work is here to stay.

White Walls By Tatyana Tolstaya Translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell and Antonina W. Bouis This first comprehensive collection of stories from a writer whom Edna O'Brien dubbed "an enchantress" shows off Tolstaya's unparalleled ability to reflect the heartbreak and humor of everyday life in contemporary Russia.

Russian Writers Collection The Slynx, Ice, Envy, and The Stray Dog Cabaret

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