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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
Looking at Sorokin and that devilish goatee of his leads one to think of a medieval jeester, a true imp.
What sort of perverse and surreal fantasies could be produced from a fecund mind such as this?
Well, the fantasies are mostly perverse, thats true, lots of shots at easy targets, elder men abusing younger boys is such an overused trope to signal the decadence and corruption of the elite, but the fantasies are not fun. We are in the future, a dystopian society, something straight out of Houellebecqs nightmares. The story is composed of different fragments, a lot of snapshots of this society but we never get the whole picture, and it consists of one dull scene after another laden with historical digressions trying to explain how this society turned out as it did interspersed with scenes of shock and gore, stuff that seem mildly shocking to anyone who has ever browsed the interwebs in their teens. Sorokin also seems politically inept and clueless, for all the talk of him being anti-putin their worldview matches more than it differs, the ghost of Anatoly Fomenko haunts every middleaged russian it seems.
It is a really dumb and blunt book, something about some miracle drug called Telluria and spikes, to be honest i couldn´t make heads or tails out of that silly gimmick, mostly because it is so stupid.
This dystopian society is basically what you average boomer uncle would come up with if asked.
Very poorly written, like you would think almost intentionally at times (?) because the reputation of Sorokin being an incredible stylist and proficient imitator/mocker of other styles you would never get that from reading this.
What sort of perverse and surreal fantasies could be produced from a fecund mind such as this?
Well, the fantasies are mostly perverse, thats true, lots of shots at easy targets, elder men abusing younger boys is such an overused trope to signal the decadence and corruption of the elite, but the fantasies are not fun. We are in the future, a dystopian society, something straight out of Houellebecqs nightmares. The story is composed of different fragments, a lot of snapshots of this society but we never get the whole picture, and it consists of one dull scene after another laden with historical digressions trying to explain how this society turned out as it did interspersed with scenes of shock and gore, stuff that seem mildly shocking to anyone who has ever browsed the interwebs in their teens. Sorokin also seems politically inept and clueless, for all the talk of him being anti-putin their worldview matches more than it differs, the ghost of Anatoly Fomenko haunts every middleaged russian it seems.
It is a really dumb and blunt book, something about some miracle drug called Telluria and spikes, to be honest i couldn´t make heads or tails out of that silly gimmick, mostly because it is so stupid.
This dystopian society is basically what you average boomer uncle would come up with if asked.
Very poorly written, like you would think almost intentionally at times (?) because the reputation of Sorokin being an incredible stylist and proficient imitator/mocker of other styles you would never get that from reading this.
It's hard to say anything critical about such a thoroughly strange book. It's enough to share that reading this made invisible parts of my body vibrate in ways very, very few other media has. It's difficult to form compartives solid enough to call this anything like a "great" book but it has single-handedly reignited my love for fiction.
Sometimes I list down the SF Ufos which have navigated my window sill:
Dhalgren, Samuel R Delaney
Orbitor, Mircea Cartarescu
Le Dernier Monde, Celine Miniard
The Vhorr, Brian Catlin
Biographie Comparee de Jorian Murgrave, Antoine Volodine
Un Navire de Nulle Part, Antoine Volodine
A good half of Antoine Volodine’s works
Solaris, Stanislas Lem – this classic among Ufos
Mange-Monde, Serge Brussolo
Stretch science fiction’s reach and you will include The (obvious) Naked Lunch, William Burroughs, for its drug-fueled nightmares, The Death of Virgile, Hermann Broch, for its impossible knowledge of the doors of oblivion, Souvenirs d’Afrique, Raymond Roussel, for its stubbornness in flirting with the surreal.
And here comes Telluria, Vladimir Sorokin, a collection of short stories sewed together by their universe. Like the Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith, with whom he shares little else. Sorokin writes like Henry Miller. He is a volcano. Sometimes he writes like Proust, he is a long river, he is the Danube. Sometimes he writes like Dostoevsky – to whom he refers – and his characters cease to make sense. One has to dig, deep, to source their motivation. Sometimes he writes like a general – I do not dare say Tolstoi, Sorokin’s style never reaches that level of classicism. His stories are about power, addition, poverty, immense wealth, nostalgia, abandon, rage, madness, skills, retreat, conquest, childhood and destiny. A hundred pages into the novel I realized that there was no plot and that it did not matter, for the plot was not necessary. The binder is in the margins. The characters, once glanced at, never return. This is the psychedelic slide show of a mad world, some years into the future, half medieval. It is incomplete. It is inconsistent. It is sanguine and generous.
It is in the list.
Dhalgren, Samuel R Delaney
Orbitor, Mircea Cartarescu
Le Dernier Monde, Celine Miniard
The Vhorr, Brian Catlin
Biographie Comparee de Jorian Murgrave, Antoine Volodine
Un Navire de Nulle Part, Antoine Volodine
A good half of Antoine Volodine’s works
Solaris, Stanislas Lem – this classic among Ufos
Mange-Monde, Serge Brussolo
Stretch science fiction’s reach and you will include The (obvious) Naked Lunch, William Burroughs, for its drug-fueled nightmares, The Death of Virgile, Hermann Broch, for its impossible knowledge of the doors of oblivion, Souvenirs d’Afrique, Raymond Roussel, for its stubbornness in flirting with the surreal.
And here comes Telluria, Vladimir Sorokin, a collection of short stories sewed together by their universe. Like the Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith, with whom he shares little else. Sorokin writes like Henry Miller. He is a volcano. Sometimes he writes like Proust, he is a long river, he is the Danube. Sometimes he writes like Dostoevsky – to whom he refers – and his characters cease to make sense. One has to dig, deep, to source their motivation. Sometimes he writes like a general – I do not dare say Tolstoi, Sorokin’s style never reaches that level of classicism. His stories are about power, addition, poverty, immense wealth, nostalgia, abandon, rage, madness, skills, retreat, conquest, childhood and destiny. A hundred pages into the novel I realized that there was no plot and that it did not matter, for the plot was not necessary. The binder is in the margins. The characters, once glanced at, never return. This is the psychedelic slide show of a mad world, some years into the future, half medieval. It is incomplete. It is inconsistent. It is sanguine and generous.
It is in the list.
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I am a free woman. Neither people nor the city have caught hold of my freedom. I was born into a dark city and my father and mother conceived me in a stone coffin. My mother gave birth to me in that same stone coffin. All city people live in stone coffins. They are born into stone coffins, they live in them, then they die in them. And those who have died are transferred into wooden coffins so that the earth shall swallow them for all time. Is it worth living only so's to be transferred from one coffin to the next? Is it worth living only so's to satisfy one's slow stone-coffin desires? Is it worth living only so's to deafen our desires in the stone coffins of our cities?
challenging
dark
funny
slow-paced
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This was really interesting. It’s really a collection of short stories set in this same future Eurasia, where the drug Tellurium is in the background of everything in one way or another. We get perspectives of workers and (vaguely) aristocrats, humans and zoomorphs, biguns and litluns, etc. Some chapters are set up like plays, some are first person, some third person. Some chapters call back to characters we have previously met or show different points of view. It’s all really fascinating and well done.
Wow.
The book is a strange start, but it just gets better and better, painting a new world that is oh-so-familiar: Europe, Russia, and China are split into near-feudal elements, and life is miserable for everyone. There are elves, giants ("big'uns"), and tiny fairies ("littl'uns"), and everyone is just trying to live. These vignettes always feature Tellurium, a drug, in some capacity. Once you begin to see that, you now start to see people not dependent upon it, but desperate for it, desperate for hope of a different future, desperate for something to take them away.
Chapters 39-41 offer a brilliant and sorrowful take on Russia, which strikes a certain note of familiarity as it honestly feels like we are on the brink of WW3.
The vignettes are simply beautiful. There are a handful that don't make as much sense, but the second half of the book is far better than the first half, which is still pretty good.
Drugs are sometimes difficult to discuss because there is the conflation of the high as well as the addiction. Telluria does not appear to cause any chemical addiction in and of itself — plus it's too expensive to get addicted to — so we really just see people's desire for its high from a psychological standpoint. I particularly love the story of the factory worker who, in a breathless letter to his boss, asks for money so he can see his dead brother again.
Max Lawton is a brilliant translator. I look forward to reading more of Sorokin's works and Lawton's works.
The book is a strange start, but it just gets better and better, painting a new world that is oh-so-familiar: Europe, Russia, and China are split into near-feudal elements, and life is miserable for everyone. There are elves, giants ("big'uns"), and tiny fairies ("littl'uns"), and everyone is just trying to live. These vignettes always feature Tellurium, a drug, in some capacity. Once you begin to see that, you now start to see people not dependent upon it, but desperate for it, desperate for hope of a different future, desperate for something to take them away.
Chapters 39-41 offer a brilliant and sorrowful take on Russia, which strikes a certain note of familiarity as it honestly feels like we are on the brink of WW3.
The vignettes are simply beautiful. There are a handful that don't make as much sense, but the second half of the book is far better than the first half, which is still pretty good.
Drugs are sometimes difficult to discuss because there is the conflation of the high as well as the addiction. Telluria does not appear to cause any chemical addiction in and of itself — plus it's too expensive to get addicted to — so we really just see people's desire for its high from a psychological standpoint. I particularly love the story of the factory worker who, in a breathless letter to his boss, asks for money so he can see his dead brother again.
Max Lawton is a brilliant translator. I look forward to reading more of Sorokin's works and Lawton's works.
Thanks to the publisher for an ARC of this book. The stories are loosely connected, told from a variety of different perspectives (and styles). I don't think "novel" is the best term for this book as it had a rather aimless quality to it. The world building was interesting but this book will challenge those who prefer reading a more linear structure. Plenty to read into in each of the chapters, including authoritarianism, religion, drugs, and sexuality.
Fifty short stories of a dystopian world after a global religious war. The stories each have a different point of view and are set in different locations around the globe. They are written in the form of prayers, a song, proclamations, a news broadcast, letters, or even a poem that reimagines Allen Ginsburg’s Howl. The short stories are part fairy tale, part science fiction and includes giants, Templar knights, robots, princesses, and dog men. The ecological devastation and political chaos coexists with rudimentary tools and high tech machines. In this world the metal tellurium has become both currency and drug. Tellurium nails are hammered into the user’s skull by men called Carpenters and produces feelings of ecstasy, provides strength and courage before a battle, the acquisition of knowledge and abilities, and allows one to converse with the dead.
Story No. 21
Magnus the Hasty, a Carpenter, rushes on towards his destination and, as he approaches his goal, was scanned to verify his identity. Shown into the hall he was greeted by five other Carpenters and has his feet washed by his companions. The following day, during the grand ceremony, the Carpenters gather and are joined by the Grand Magistrate of the Templar Order, the military Chaplin and the Templar Knights themselves. After Mass, the Chaplin offers a sermon on the preservation of Christendom, if not the resulting “end of days”, and then the knights are called to a great battle. The Holy Communion taken, Magnus was chosen to nail the tellurium spike into the Magister’s skull while the other five Carpenters perform the same service for the knights present. The Magister speaks, encouraging the warriors to take the battle to the infidels in Istanbul and to save Christian Europe from slavery and a heretic faith. Leaving the refractory, the fighters walk to the catapult and the robots armed with cannons and rockets. The Magister, the Chaplin, and the knights climb into the robots and are catapulted into the air. And the thirteenth Crusade begins.