It is one of my favourite books written by Vladimir Voinovich and this is just the description or synopsis of what it is all about.  It was my intention to quote the book occasionally, so I was hoping that some people might enjoy the quotes and possibly even would want to read the book itself.

Moscow 2042

In 1982 – not coincidentally, just tow years before the year made famous by Orwell – Vitaly Kartsev, an exiled Soviet writer, discovers that a German travel agency is booking flights to a variety of tempting locations and, thanks to guaranteed passage through a time warp, to a variety of tantalizing years in the future Moscow?  2042?  Who could resist?  And so begins Vladimir Voinovich’s satiric – and, as current events would cast it, prophetic – tale of the life in the USSR in the not-so-distant future.  Kartsev’s trip home turns out to be a series of outrageous escapades involving terrorists, sheiks, an American news correspondent, the KGB, the CIA, diffident keepers of the ideological flame, one wild-eyed messiah, three geopolitical “rings of hostility” surrounding Moscow, and countless Soviet institutions that – barely – outdo those of the twentieth century in their pungent inanity.

Moscow 2042 was originally published in English in 1987, when the Berlin Wall was firmly in place and perestroika just beginning.  In his new Afterword to this edition, Voinovich comments, with customary sting, on the events that inspired his novel, what has happened since publication, and the curious interplay of fiction and reality.

Wickedly funny and raucous in its satire, Moscow 2042 is “written by a man who has been forged within our difficult modern history but who still manages to possess a profound sense of literary play.  It shows Mr. Voinovich as the doyen of late-twentieth-century satirists with targets on both sides of the wall, and a major international writer.  (The New York Times)

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Posted on August 22nd, 2009 under Literature • Tags: "Moscow 2042", satire, Vladimir Voinovich. • • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback