Astrophobia

A magnificent translation of Sokolov's Palisandriia (1985), this novel by a leading avant-garde Russian emigre writer (the next Nabokov?) is a literary parody written with great wit and luxurious verbal texture. It is a mock-memoir by high-born orphan Palisander, who is banished from the Kremlin for a prank that killed Stalin, then imprisoned for an assassination attempt on Brezhnev, exiled by Andropov, and, finally, returns as leader of Russia in 1999, all the while carrying on a sexual campaign against elderly women. Sokolov works with several subtexts and themes--including time, death, and sex--and the text brims with literary allusions. He spoofs both pornography and dissident writing on Soviet history, trivializing the terrors as he describes instead the imagined domestic and sex lives of the leaders. With its total irreverence for fact, chronology, and credibility, the book is ultimately very funny.