Liam Hess
Back in the USSR
An oligarch’s ballerina wife, a prisoner of war in Chechnya, a boy from St Petersburg who dreams of becoming a DJ: these are just some of the colourful, exhilarating characters who populate Anthony Marra’s collection of interlocking short stories, released in the US last year to critical acclaim and now published in the UK. A work of extraordinary confidence and empathy, The Tsar of Love and Techno functions more as a novel than a series of short pieces, leaping across decades, countries and social strata to deliver an offbeat take on the impact and legacy of the Soviet Union on a human scale.
The first story describes the work of an artist employed by the government to doctor and airbrush paintings and photographs of ministers, establishing the guiding themes of the book: the ethics of truth and deception,
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'The trouble seems to be that we are not asked to read this author, reading being a thing of the past. We are asked to decode him.'
From the archive, Derek Mahon peruses the early short fiction of Thomas Pynchon.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/rock-n-roll-is-here-to-stay
'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mother-of-unions
Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553