PU-239

PU-239
Fiction

PU-239

And Other Russian Fantasies
“Kalfus is a virtuoso of the dismal comedy of Soviet life.” —NEW YORK TIMES
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Ken Kalfus plucks individual lives from the stew of a century of Russian history and serves them up in tales that range from hair-raising to comic to fabulous.

The astonishing title story follows a doomed nuclear power plant worker as he hawks a most unusual package on the black market. In “Orbit,” the first cosmonaut navigates several unexpected items as he prepares to blaze the trail for the new communist society. In “Budyonnovsk,” a young man hopes desperately that the takeover of his town by Chechen rebels will save his marriage. Set in the 1920s, “Birobidzhan” is the bittersweet story of a Jewish couple journeying to the Soviet Far East. The novella, “Peredelkino,” which closes the book, traces the fortunes of a 1960s literary apparatchik whose romantic intrigues become political.  

Together, these works of fiction capture the famously enigmatic Russian psyche. PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies is a book that offers a moving and kaleidoscopic portrait of the Russian people through a century of turbulent history.

ISBN:
9781571310828
Publish Date: 
02/01/2011
Pages: 
312
Size: 
5.5 × 8.5 × 0.81 in
Weight: 
14.3 oz
Author

Ken Kalfus is the author of 2 A.M. in Little America.

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