Blue Lard

by Vladimir Sorokin

Book Overview

Blue Lard is an act of desecration. Blue Lard is what's left after the towering masterpieces of Russian literature have been blown to smithereens, the most graphic, shocking, controversial, and celebrated book to be published in Russia since the end of Communism. Denounced as an abomination on publication in 1999--a crowd of angry Putin supporters gathered in front of Moscow's Bolshoi Theater to toss shredded copies of Sorokin's books...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1681378183
• ISBN13: 9781681378183
• Release Date: February 2024
• Publisher: New York Review of Books
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.0" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Words don't really do it justice

My first encounter with Sorokin will certainly not be my last. After reading a little about it, I was expecting off-the-walls insanity, but that doesn't even scratch the surface! The plot itself feels like a fever dream, but the prose (tr. Max Lawton) is somewhere between a lushly verbose word-dessert and a complete deconstruction of language itself. It's like Pynchon, Gogol, Nabokov, Burroughs, Tolstoy, and Platonov were thrown into a blender of ultra-violence and anachronism. If black humor, lengthy digressions, and hallucinogens are your thing, it's hard to beat this. If not ... well, it's definitely not for everyone. Don't attempt to make sense of it, just enjoy the ride.