"What's a fable?" asks the main character of Tatyana Tolstaya's first novel - published in 2002 and now out in paperback. "A fable is a directive rendered in a simplified form for popular consumption," comes the reply.

On the surface, The Slynx is a depressing, dystopian fable of humanity after a second Fall. But a fable is rarely as simple as it seems on the surface. And, in this case, you have to dig for the directive.

Tolstaya conjures up a rich, fantastic and mutely believable post-apocalyptic Russian world that is rich in allegory and wordplay. At the center of the tale is the simple, unambitious scribe, Benedikt. When confronted by the Head Santurion (in charge of internal security), who happens to be his prospective father-in-law, he cries: "I don't know anything, I've never seen anything. Never heard anything. I don't understand anything, don't want anything, haven't dreamt anything."

It is the common cry of the innocent in the face of tyranny. And it is as false as it is irrelevant.

Benedikt of course wants something. First it is the beautiful Olenka. And then, after he discovers books, it is the calm, comfortable life of fantasy which books allow: escape from his horror- and fearstricken world.

But, for everything, there is a price. And perhaps that is the directive, the moral of this dark and fascinating fable, which Tolstaya - previously a short story writer - reportedly took a decade to write. Even in a post-nuclear world, in which mice are the basic foodstuff and common currency, it turns out that things can get worse still.

Reviewed in Russian Life

I eagely awaited the release of this book and read it as soon as it was published in its English version a few years ago. I agree with other commentators on this page who praise the "ingenious social commentary" and so forth. Indeed, right up to page 98 I felt that this book had the makings of one of the best novels ever.

However, after page 98 the magic abruptly disintegrates. I don't know how else to put it. It's a shame. Googling for details of Tatyana's life, you get some clue as to why she could not sustain the magic.

The review from Publishers Weekly is wrong saying that the world described in The Slynx is the world of permanent winter. The reviewer obviously have not read the book.

The book is a masterpiece of Russian language. I suppose it is equally hard to translate to English as to translate Shakespeare from English. Tolstaya's language is not a simple Russian, it is a colorful, rich literature language. Note that the book is written as if on behalf of Benedikt. And Tolstaya in a masterly fashion gives the prose a rural and still noble shade of Russia primordial. It's really enjoying.

"The Slynx", the debut novel by Tatyana Tolstaya, the granddaughter of the Russian writer Alexey Tolstoy, is worth reading. There are many reasons to recommend this book. The first and perhaps most important one is the language - funny, full of neologisms and contrasts, bursting with life; the novel is an excellent satire on the contemporary changes in the language, its simplifications and slang. The second is the atmosphere, as if taken from a painting of a primitivist. The third are its deep roots in Russia, its history and nature, the Russian soul and destiny.

Although obviously possible to classify as a dystopia, "The Slynx" cannot really be compared to any other dystopian novels (I cannot see any resemblance to Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale, except that it is also a dystopia, which is not too much of a similarity), except the other contemporary Russian ones (it seems like the Russian writers have only futuristic visions nowadays) - and from those I have read, I enjoyed "The Slynx" the most. The other association I had was with "The Clockwork Orange", mainly because of the linguistic stylization.

The action takes place in some settlement consisting of bigger and smaller wooden huts (later we learn that it is placed on where Moscow used to be), sometime in the future, after the undefined explosion. The inhabitants are superstitious (their beliefs are wonderfully re-told old Russian folk tales; the novel is full of literary references, to the tales as well as to poetry and prose, which are delightful for the reader), they make all tools of wood, they eat mice and are scared of the slynx, an unseen, mythical creature from the forest, and of the Chechens from the South. They suffer from various mutations, or so-called "Effects" of the explosion. They never read, only praise and fear Fyodor Kuzmich, the absolute ruler, never ask questions and try, like animals, to find their place in the world of poisonous rabbits and other post-explosion deviations. The main protagonist, Benedikt, although raised among the same people and unable to really get out of his environment, has a lot of doubts, sometimes asks inconvenient questions, and reads all the books he can lay his hands on (it does not make him any wiser though, as he falls in love and marries into a rich family, which numbs him almost irreversibly). The society is surprisingly similar to the Russian society (as it is now and as it was throughout the centuries) - there is a grey mass of poor, common people and the few unscrupulous rich, there is also a special degenerated group of people from Old Times, who are used instead of horses to pull sledges (I had a most strange association with taxi drivers at this point) and, finally, The Oldeners, people who survived the Explosion and their Effect is mainly a very long lifespan. The Oldeners long for the old days (who could blame them?), keep secret libraries of forbidden books and try to preserve the old culture, which has deteriorated (their dialogues with the ordinary people cause laughter through the tears), and memories of the past. They speak the normal language of educated people and sometimes are completely clueless and childlike in the Slynx reality (paradoxically, for them, as for us, the rest of the society is childlike and clueless about the world).

There are, of course, obvious parallels to the Russian reality (I do not think that "The Slynx" can be read as a universal dystopia, it is Russian to the core). The Explosion can be explained in several ways, some would see it as Charnobyl, but most likely it is the Great Revolution, Fyodor Kuzmich is a personification of Stalin, and The Oldeners are the old intelligentsia, a class specific for the Communist countries from Eastern Europe.
"The Slynx" is enjoyable, although it is also thoroughly pessimistic and does not give any hope (although, maybe, at the very end, there is a tiny grain of hope for a change). Tatyana Tolstaya has been noted for her nihilism already after the publication of her short stories, and "The Slynx" seems to confirm this thesis. The book could be shorter, though, after a while the language gets a bit tiresome, and the ending is also not its strongest point.

I would reccomend reading some of Russian history (around the time period when Stalin was president) otherwise it would be difficult to understand some parts and what Tolstaya is talking about.

I read this book in Russian and English, and of course the english translation is not nearly as good as the original Russian. However, the story is still amazing, and I love how she uses irony, and makes fun of certain concepts-it's sad, but funny at the same time!