The Slynx

Granddad would be proud.

This was really bizarre, but I liked it. Lately I've just been diving into books figuring that if I bought them, I thought I'd like them, so why need the synopsis again. I remembered that this was a Russian dystopia but that was about it.

It's a sort of future/post-apocalyptic Russia, where people have mutations (Consequences) and eat and use mainly mice. Books are sort of forbidden? But the leader passes things off as having written them himself. It's super bizarre but a love letter to books and knowledge and against authoritarianism, I think? Its not really about the Slynx though! I wanted a threat from without, but I guess the point is of the threat within. The writing is really interesting and really funny at some times and beautiful at others. I enjoyed it but I feel like I didn't quite get it. I'll keep saying it, you can't go wrong with NYRB Classics.

The protagonist of this novel becomes addicted to reading books while lacking the intelligence to properly understand them. This novel itself is foremost wild, incredibly smart, imaginative, hilarious and overall constructed on so many layers, that I no doubt missed a lot of meaning as well :)

It's a dystopia set in a Russia after a blast, where society progressed backwards into superstituion-driven poverty that runs on trading and eating of mice, and more resembles a pre-industrial age than a future.

There's brilliance in this novel, and yet it felt hard to read it in that ‘enlightened' state. I felt like drifting in and out of appreciating all the wondrous things it does.