The Queue

by Vladimir Sorokin, Sally Laird (Translator)

Vladimir Sorokin's first published novel, The Queue, is a sly comedy about the late Soviet "years of stagnation." It consists entirely of sounds and
dialogue from people performing the quintessential Soviet act: joining a
long line to buy something, without knowing what..Thousands of citizens are in line and the rumors are flying. Leather or suede? Jackets, jeans? Turkish, Swedish, maybe even American? It doesn't matter - if anything is on sale, you better line up to buy it. Sorokin's tour de force of ventriloquism and formal daring tells the whole story in snatches of unattributed dialogue, adding up to nothing less than the real voice of the people, overheard on the street as they joke and curse, fall in and out of love, slurp down ice cream or vodka, fill out crossword puzzles, and even go to sleep and line up again in the morning as the queue drags on.

Genres: Fiction, Russia, Russian Literature, Literature, Classics, Novels, Literary Fiction

263 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Vladimir Sorokin (Владимир Сорокин, Vlagyimir Szorokin) was born in a small town outside of Moscow in 1955. He trained as an engineer at the Moscow Institute of Oil and Gas, but turned to art and writing, becoming a major presence in the Moscow underground of the 1980s. His work was banned in the Soviet Union, and his first novel, The Queue, was published by the famed émigré dissident Andrei Sinyavsky in France in 1983. In 1992, Sorokin’s Collected Stories was nominated for the Russian Booker Prize; in 1999, the publication of the controversial novel Blue Lard, which included a sex scene between clones of Stalin and Khrushchev, led to public demonstrations against the book and to demands that Sorokin be prosecuted as a pornographer; in 2001, he received the Andrei Biely Award for outstanding contributions to Russian literature. Sorokin is also the author of the screenplays for the movies Moscow, The Kopeck, and 4, and of the libretto for Leonid Desyatnikov’s Rosenthal’s Children, the first new opera to be commissioned by the Bolshoi Theater since the 1970s. He has written numerous plays and short stories, and his work has been translated throughout the world. Among his most recent books are Sugar Kremlin and Day of the Oprichnik. He lives in Moscow.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

With witty, brilliant Vladimir Sorokin, novelist and playwright from the land of Gogol, Bulgakov and Kharms, the spirit of great Russian literature lives on.

Post-Soviet bad boy? Many of his countryman would undoubtedly shout “yes!” since his novel Blue Lard contains explicit anal sex between Stalin and Khrushchev and The Norm, another novel, takes place in the Brezhnev-era where Soviet citizens are required to eat packages of shit. Added to this, many of his works feature slaughter, sadism and even cannibalism mixed in with elements of crime thriller, science fiction, fantasy and the absurd.

However, the book under review here precedes all of the above. Indeed, The Queue is a first novel published in 1985 when the author was a mere lad of thirty.

Back In 1985 the Soviet Union still existed and Socialist Realism was the authorized, acceptable way of writing fiction, since, according to the state, such writing is a faithful mirroring of life and expresses essential truths.

Vladimir Sorokin’s novel is realism but a variety unwelcomed by the authorities – he blows state sanctioned realism to smithereens by actually giving it back to the people on the street. In this way I'm reminded of what Raymond Chandler said about crime writer Dashiell Hammett, that he "gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it."

Reading The Queue I had the impression Vladimir Sorokin simply joined his Comrades on line (a very long, twisting line) with a hidden microphone to record their conversations, their shouting, their jokes, their complaining and cursing, their conniving and conjectures, their grunting and groaning. The dialogue is that natural. Nothing is forced. Here’s an author, even at a relatively young age, that had a superb ear for how people speak.

To underscore the novel’s form: it’s 100% dialogue - atmosphere, mood, setting, character development all emerge from dialogue and the dialogue has no character attributions, that is, there are no he said, she said, Ivan said, Natasha said. Rather, the left side of each page is filled with dashes (-) to indicate a change in speaker. In this way, flipping through The Queue looks very much like Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman or Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages. Well, actually, with The Queue there are a number of blank pages noting a break in the waiting to take time out for things like sleep. These blank pages give the novel a decidedly Postmodern look and feel.

And what do these men and women standing in the queue have to say? Although it’s never entirely clear what everyone is so eager to buy, they sure have lots to talk about: Did he cut in line up there? What do you do for a living? How would you like to join me for coffee? Shut up! Don’t be so rude.

Talking and more talking about superior foreign products, asking for assistance on a crossword puzzle, old people yammering about the good old Stalin days, exchanging insults, telling jokes, arguing politics, making witty and not so witty remarks, comparisons with American workers (they have to work their assess off over there), offering opinions on food, making plans to step out of line for a drink. And on it goes.

Then there is the roll call conducted by the organizers which goes on for pages. Thirty-three pages of roll call! In this way, a reader is given an actual taste of the queue experience. Now that’s Socialist Realism, Vladimir Sorokin-style.

But I must say there is one queue hell several women in the novel had to endure that strikes me as the worst: standing in line for hours and hours with kids. I don’t know how they could take it. The organizers should have awarded metals to those courageous souls along with the blue jeans from America or suede jacket from Turkey or spike shoes from Sweden or whatever else they waited in queue days on end to receive.

Not nearly as bad, but bad enough is having an emotionally charged negative exchange with the next person on line: pushing, shoving, accusing (you stepped out of line!) and various other forms of crudeness and rudeness.

Conversely, affectionate physical contact is occasionally made, and, who knows, such connection might lead to a date or coffee, a relationship and even, heart of hearts, romance. It's the luck of the queue.

From what I've written so far you might be surprised to know The Queue does have a main character and hero, a handsome, single young man, an editor for a magazine by the name of Vadim.

And perhaps not so obvious from the beginning pages, The Queue turns out to be a sweet, charming love story. Quite different than Vladimir Soroken’s later work. To say anything more regarding Vadim's ups and downs in and out of the queue would be to say too much, so let me shift focus and mention this New York Review Books edition is 250-pages but with the short clips of dialogue (rarely will a person say more than a sentence or two or three), The Queue is a quick, delightful day’s read.

The NYRB edition includes translator Sally Laird’s informative Preface providing cultural context for the novel. She writes: “If part of the pleasure in reading The Queue lies in picking out the “melody” (and the numerous sub-melodies along the way), a related satisfaction comes simply from the novel’s perfect – sometimes pitiless – realism.”

Also included is an Afterward written in 2008 by Vladimir Sorokin himself, wherein he speaks of the rise and fall of Russian and Soviet queues. One part of the history is a tragedy where more than two thousand people were crushed waiting to receive a bag of gifts from the Tsar. Also, how according to statistics, Soviet citizens would spend a third of each day standing in lines. This to say, the queue played a vital role in his country’s history.

Not only does The Queue document a particular historic phenomenon but Vladimir Sorokin has written a love story of great beauty – I almost couldn’t believe such a happy ending.


"And the queue? That fantastic, many headed monster, the hallmark of socialism? Where has it gone, the monstrous Leviathan that wound entire cities in its motely coils? Where are the long hours of standing, the stirring shouts, the dramatic confrontations, the joyous trembling of the person at the head of the line?" - Vladimir Sorokin, from his new Afterward to the New York Review Books publication of The Queue

[· · Rating 4 out of 5]

(2 September, 2014)

- Hey!
- Hey yourself.
- What’re you doing?
- Not much, right now I'm stuck on this book I've been reading. Can't get it out of my head.
- Any good?
- With the window open up there you can hear everything.
- Yeah, it's my favorite song.
- Yes, very good but not quite sure why.
- Okayyyy...
- Well, it's just a bunch of people waiting in line and talking and stuff.
- ... and?
- Naw, that's it. No narrator or any structure. No paragraphs or chapters and you have to guess at the settings - oh and sometimes you are not sure who is talking to whom.
- The sparkle in your eyes keeps me alive - and the sparkle in your eyes keeps me alive, keeps me alive.
- And it's good? Sounds kinda weird.
- That's just it, it's not! Think of it as 'A day in the life of' but instead of it being about any one person it's about a line, a queue if you will.
- Rüdiger, come here!
- But mom!
- But mom nothing!
- I always pronounce it in French... even if the whole thing is in English.
- I was just about to say that.
- And the world - the world turns around - and the world and the world - the world drags me down.
- Anyway, I might give it a whirl.
- Do it, I think Sorokin might have been drugged up or dying or something while writing it.
- Hey baby.
- Piss off asshole!
- Geez, can't even say anything to anyone these days.
- Wanna get out of here? Maybe get a coffee and buy that book?
- Deal!
- ... Sanctuaryyy.

[Mircalla · Rating 4 out of 5]

la coda, la Russia post Stalin e dell'andare a letto con chi ha veramente il potere

una coda infinita, tempo che scorre scandito dalle chiacchiere di quei poveretti che sperano di arrivare in qualunque posto stiano cercando di arrivare mettendosi in coda, amicizie che nascono, corteggiamenti e avances, che si sa che i russi non perdono tempo o meglio lo impiegano mettendo a frutto tutte le manovre in grado di portare a uno dei passatempi nazionali dai tempi in cui tutto era fermo: il sesso, poi autobus che passano avanti, milizia che non pare per nulla al servizio del popolo, formaggio e vodka, e alla fine ma solo nelle ultime pagine qualcosa accade...

deliziosa metafora dell'attesa della realizzazione del socialismo dopo che lo stesso è stato di fatto abolito,
caustico ma lieve allo stesso momento, ed è questo il suo pregio maggiore, quello di dire cose terribili e di farti sorridere mentre ti accorgi che non solo ha ragione, ma che le cose sono sempre più immobili di come appaiono a chi ci sta dentro

[Aldrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

First published in 1985, six years before the collapse of the political environment that serves as both its subject and its setting, Vladimir Sorokin’s The Queue delineates human society by zeroing in on a massive line of people in a Muscovite suburb in the 1970s. During and around that period it was perfectly normal for a citizen to fall in line and wait for his turn to buy imported quality goods, even when he’s unsure of the length of time he had to endure before he finally arrived at the head of the line and more unsure of the exact nature of the products he's about to purchase. In The Queue, Sorokin, a writer who clearly possesses a sharp eye for the minutiae of life ordinary, presents an often amusing analysis of the quotidian phenomenon that is the queue and shows off its little-known and seldom acknowledged capacity for social commentaries and personal revelations.

Queues, particularly the long and winding ones, were ordinary occurrences in Soviet Russia. Just ask Sorokin himself, who, in his afterword to the novel, waxes nostalgic about the disappearance of the monster queue upon the dissolution of the Soviet era. But while The Queue may sound like a ballad dedicated to days gone by, right at the outset the contemporary relevance of this quarter-century-old novel is already hinted at, beginning as it does with a newcomer uttering a variation of a question frequently asked today in light rail transit stations, ATM booths, Apple product launches, and disaster relief goods distribution centers: “Comrade, who's last in the queue?” It's a question, it turns out, that was more frequently asked then. Back in the Soviet era whenever something from abroad was put up for sale, be it a heap of American blue jeans, a stockpile of Turkish footwear, or a collection of Japanese electronic appliances, people were naturally expected to line up by the thousands. Sorokin makes a spectacle out of this observation in his novel, where he conjures up a formidable group of characters, most of them unnamed and only a handful of them brought to the fore of the story, compelled to queue up for whatever is waiting for them—or, rather, whatever they're supposed to be waiting for—at the head of the line.

—They're nice imported ones, I saw them.

—I couldn't get up there. Couldn't even get near.

—I saw some that a woman had got.

—Nice colour?

—Quite nice—greyish-brown.

—Suede-look?

—Uh-huh.

—Nonsense, young man. They're leather.

—Leather?

—Really?

—They can't be, I saw them myself...

—Quite right, but they only had the suede type this morning; they ran out by lunchtime. Now they're leather—dark brown.

—Oh, hell.

The Queue is, from start to finish, true to its name. Structurally it’s nothing more than a sequence of sentences, phrases, fragments, interjections, omissions, and even unintelligible murmurs. It does away with any and all traditional forms of narration, description, and authorial intervention and operates instead with a succession of quotation dashes and unattributed lines of dialogue, as exemplified by the foregoing excerpt. In the absence of dashes and dialogue there is only silence, a break in the narrative, if it can be called that, in the form of blank acid-free pages signifying the queuers' collective suspension of consciousness, their taking refuge in sleep after a day of waiting, talking, complaining, arguing, pushing, roll-calling, smoking, drinking, and trying their luck at love. Yes, love and life and Levi's.

A singularly engaging debut novel by one of the most luminous figures of contemporary Russian literature, The Queue is unabashedly postmodern. In its justified peculiarity a microcosm teeming with the absurdities of everyday life emerges; a celebration of organized chaos as the oxymoronic term applies to human society the novel, if indeed it can be called that, becomes.

[Jolis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rindā dzimu, rindā augu, rindā mūžu nodzīvoju

Savdabīga, bet ļoti interesanta grāmata, kas sastāv tikai no dialogiem. Darbība notiek kādas Krievijas pilsētas ielā, kur vietējā apavu bodē ir jauns pievedums, esot ievestas amerikāņu kurpes (bet varbūt tomēr zviedru vai bulgāru, neviens rindā īsti līdz galam nezina).
Caur šīm sarunām (vietām pat ļoti rupjām) absurdi un bezjēdzīgi garajā rindā iepazīstams teju viss padomju kolorīts. Cilvēki sadraudzējas, strīdas, piedzeras, aiziet pēc kvasa un atgriežas atpakaļ mūžīgajā rindā. Šodien tās ir kurpes, rīt būs apelsīni, parīt portfeļi.

[Christopher Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Queue is essentially William Gaddis meets Vox-era Nicholson Baker in an epic Soviet-era street line, and the result is so damn much fun, a pure pleasure from start to finish. I’m sure I was smiling like a goon the whole time. I’ll definitely be reading it again, and it has me wanting to seek out more of Sorokin’s work.

Frequently hilarious, casually profound, hard to put down.

Highly recommended.

[Frank Kasell · Rating 5 out of 5]

“An era can be judged by street conversations.” So says Russian novelist Vladimir Sorokin in the afterword to his first book, The Queue. First published in France in 1985 (but not published in Russia until after the fall of the Soviet Union), The Queue takes this dictum to heart and provides the reader a unique (and often hilarious) view of Soviet life told entirely through dialogue. That’s no exaggeration—there is not a single word of narration in the novel. Not even names to identify speakers. Just dialogue. The plot of the novel is simple: a vast number of individuals in Soviet Russia are waiting in line for certain indeterminate goods, rumored to be anything from American jeans to Turkish jackets, and they chat with each other while they wait. The reader is dropped into the scene as the proverbial fly on the wall, listening to the conversational snatches within earshot of a single segment of the enormous line.

As the day wears on, the denizens of the queue discuss many subjects: poetry (“I can’t stand Yevtushenko, but I absolutely adore Voznesensky.”); their impressions of the United States (“There’s an awful lot of crime. You can’t really go out after eight in the evening… There’s loads of stuff around to buy, but you have to work like a horse.”); the way things were different under Stalin (“Everyone complains about Stalin. And yet he won the war, strengthened the country. And everything was cheaper. / And there was order then. / ‘Course there was. You’d be brought to court if you were twenty minutes late.”); and more. It would be a challenge for any author to sustain a dialogue-based novel for more than two hundred pages, but Sorokin does a marvelous job of capturing the ebb and flow that characterizes long conversations. Think of the way a conversation on a lengthy road trip flows organically from one topic to the next, sometimes philosophical, sometimes mundane, sometimes argumentative. The Queue embodies this type of meandering, unfocused conversation.

In the tradition of literature by authors such as Kafka or Camus, The Queue takes place in a dreamlike, absurd simulacrum of reality as we know it. (The novel takes place over several days (and nights), and our friends in line never do quite make it to the front.) Despite the absurdity of the situation, however, it never feels too unrealistic. Sorokin almost seems to suggest that perhaps Soviet Russia itself was a dreamlike, absurd simulacrum of reality as we know it. This is unquestionably a work of satire. And yet, like the very best satire, there is also a real fondness for the reality being satirized. This delicate balancing act is precisely what makes The Queue such a treasure for an American hoping to understand a little bit more of another culture. Sorokin provides the street conversations, but he leaves it to you, the reader, to judge the era.

[John Hatley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the most unusual and entertaining books I have read for a long time. Written in 1983, it was never published in the former Soviet Union. Today Vladimir Sorokin is one of the foremost contemporary Russian authors.
This is a brilliant book.

[Chris Via]

Video about this and other Sorokin works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edtVH...

[Czarny Pies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since you have already wasted most of your life, you should read this dreadful book. Another evening will not make any difference. Be assured that it will not require any more time than that. Countless pages are filled with single-word lines. When nothing is happening, the author leaves the pages blank.
"The Queue" belongs either to the Dadaist or earlier Pataphysical school. It is a novel with only dialogue. Moreover as the characters are somewhat moronic dialogue is never lucid. At its best it is comic.
As the title indicates, "The Queue" is about the lengthy and numerous lines that for half a century people living in the Warsaw Pact countries had to join in order to buy things. The book's unconventional format is intended to reproduce for the reader the experience of queuing in a communist country. In it the author also provides his explanation for why the people of central Europe first accepted queuing with stoicism, then took comfort in it and finally had regrets when it was over.

[Jack Everett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in the last few years of the Soviet Union and told all in unattributed dialogue, The Queue follows a large group of people as they wait in line for, well, who knows… It's in this almost-Soviet-era Waiting for Godot that Sorokin has crafted a hilarious and oddly insightful social satire. By using only dialogue, it's a perfect snapshot of a time in Russia's history and of a community. By just using dialogue and this massive, relentless cacophony of spoken word, Sorokon tries to get at the heart of humans' motivations and actions. As we make our way through the book, we start to question, is what they're waiting for out of necessity or just simple greed? Will it make their lives better, or is it just the thrill of getting something? Materialism stacked up against years of ingrained collectivism? There's hilarity and sadness in the scarcity of things. 

Even with its almost veiled subject matter, it is incredibly fun to read, and you get the sense that Sorokin is having fun creating this human score of sound. It is jazz-like, and the old theatre kid and cinephile in me had me coming up with Robert Lepage staging techniques and Andrzej Wajda-inspired shot lists as I was reading. For people who've read this and enjoyed Sorokin's dialogue, I highly recommend seeking out plays from Samuel Beckett, David Mamet, Neil LaBute and Annie Baker.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who hasn't eavesdropped on a conversation taking place at the next table, or when standing in line at the post office? This book is an eavesdropper's treasure trove. The entire book is a series of short conversations between people standing in line in Moscow. You don't quite know what they're standing in line for, and it doesn't appear that they people in line do too. But if there's something for sale, people will stand in line for it anyway, just in case.

The snippets of conversations overheard are between a mother and her young son, a man and a young woman who meet while standing in line, an elderly man looking for drink while his wife stands in another line elsewhere, someone doing the crossword puzzle and other people who drift in and out of the line, running errands while others keep their place for them or stopping for a bite to eat in a cafe. It's ordinary conversation with real voices.

I didn't think there could be a story formed through short comments that aren't even written as a screenplay, but it works. It really works. The only part of the book I thought could have been shortened without losing the rhythm was the part when the sales clerk ran through a roll call of names.

But there is an ironical twist at the end which will make the reader chuckle.

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating. The novels consists of nothing but the unattributed utterances pf individuals (somewhat undifferentiated until the rhythms of speech and something like plot emerge) as they wait in an interminable queue, lined up hoping to buy… just what exactly… it isn’t clear… or it depends upon who’s speaking, when they’re speaking, and to whom they’re speaking. Mundane details, pages of names and numbers, blank pages when two of the protagonists take a nap in the park. Really a brilliant, satirical portrait of a distinctive feature Soviet life and, of course, a send up of socialist realism. Sometimes in its sheer mundane repetitiveness, the novel can be frustrating, but then, so is standing in a seeming less endless line waiting for...who knows what.

[Gregory Duke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm the mom who is constantly bickering at her son not to go into the street and get hit by a car while endlessly waiting for an item that may or may not exist at the end of a 2000-person line in the midst of abrasive heat and pounding rain as drunk men sing and speak classy around her and a man comes onto a woman who is vaguely interested and another man takes care of pigeons en masse. Or maybe I'm the old woman selling kvass. Or I'm the woman who owns a cat named Kulka.

Great book.

[Platon Cristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un roman-dialog — metaforă a vieții umane. O dovadă că uneori, pentru a obține ce ne propunem, e nevoie de opusul a ceea ce facem. Ușor, captivant, aventurier.

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.9*

[Karenina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro senza ombra di dubbio anomalo e coraggioso, come già detto da altri, costituito interamente da spezzoni di dialoghi, senza alcun intervento narrativo. Una volta superato l’impatto iniziale piuttosto spiazzante ci si trova immersi in una varia umanità, in coda per fantomatici quanto agognati acquisti, con il solito piglio russo, fra grottesco, umoristico e caustico. Proseguendo nella lettura si impara a riconoscere le varie voci che ricorrono, il trascorrere delle interminabili ore in balia degli eventi atmosferici, piccole liti, grandi bevute, favoritismi e soprusi e l’immancabile burocrazia sovietica.
Operazione non facile ma perfettamente riuscita.

[Graham Catt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sorokin's debut novel is a clever depiction of the late Soviet era, where 'the queue' forms a central part of daily life. The book is written entirely in dialogue, with the various characters emerging as the story progresses. It is often humorous, sometimes poignant. "The Queue" is an essential read for anyone interested in Russian Literature or Russian History.

[Daniel Polansky]

Hahhahahahhahahahahahhahahhahahahahhahahahahhahah. Will I Keep It: Yes.

[Keenan · Rating 4 out of 5]

When trying to think of adjectives that properly describe The Queue, the word cheeky keeps coming to mind. In a book which is entirely dialogue, many times unattributable to any one person in the queue, there's a playfulness in both the structure and format of the novel: blank pages for the moments when everyone is asleep, slurps and mmms and sips when food and drink go in, the progressive slurring after too much vodka, the grunts and ooh babys of the penultimate scene. All the chaos and annoyance and speculation of the queued is captured in gasps of frustration and tempers running high and cathartic conversation to pass the time and endure this uniquely Soviet pastime.

I remained a bit sceptical of this whole enterprise until the Afterword, which does an astounding job of analyzing what these queues meant on a psychological level for the Soviet populace and the importance of capturing all its oblique wonder in literary form. A deeply weird but highly entertaining novel.

[Salomé · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great form! The characters really popped up despite the absence of narration.

[Arina Kirse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Остроумнейшее описание абсолютного абсурда концепции очереди в СССР — с одной стороны, и такой настоящей, такой узнаваемой жизни обычных людей, стоящих в этой очереди, — с другой.

[Fred Dameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

The queue is a unique Soviet/Russian phenomenon. Imagine Black Friday lines for milk, sausage, bread, and butter. Or for semi essentials such as good winter boots/shoes, coats. shirts, slacks or designer jeans. But it also applies to events: the anniversary of the crowning of the new Tsar at Khodynskoe Field in 1905 where at least 200 people were crushed to death trying to get gift baskets, Stalin's Lying in State for three days and on day three the crush of people, no death toll has ever been reported, and finally the end of the Soviets Union in 1994 with the blood on the steps of the Moscow White House AKA the Soviet Parliament. Through the history of the Soviet Union the queue has been cultural phenomenon and it's loose in 1994 at the White House will be missed by many. Sorokin's book "The Queue" is about one mega queue for something. We are never quite sure what the people are queuing for and that is part of what the queue was a bout.

Sorokin describes a typical mega queue in Moscow. Why are we queuing? It's for a product from either Sweden, Czechoslovakia, the U.S., or a good factory? It actually does not matter what we are queuing for because the real story is the lives of the people. A mother and her son who stand in line for 36 hrs with mom trying to keep control of her eight to twelve year old. A writer, or hero, who is waiting for this very important item because he wants one. His friend, who our writer meets in the queue, they get drunk together, sober up, eat, all while waiting. One women who the writer strikes up a conversation but she leaves with a man who has access to the State stores. A Kvass seller just making some cash selling drinks to those in the queue. All these stories are told in snippets of conversation between roll calls. Conversations about weather, sports, politics both locally and internationally. I won't spoil the ending but if you have a few hours and access to this one it's a great read.

This edition does have a commentary at the end about the importance of the queue to Soviet life. A commentary that is both historical and informative about the Russian soul. The Russian need to be led and to live in a system where some type of queue exists.

[readerswords · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three things interested me the most about the book- the first that it was was written completely in dialogues, a form that I have come across only in the works of the Argentinean screenwriter and novelist Manuel Puig. The second, that it is about a people standing in unending queues, something that India recently went through when 85% of its currency was de- legalized and much of the population forced to stand in queues to get a ration of their own money from the banks. Like Russia before Stalin, the crowd, and not the queue is the norm in India and the fact the millions stood in these queues without protesting was surreal. I wanted to understand the mindset of the people who have been forced to stand in such queues. Finally, the novel is about the late Soviet period, a time that has not inspired any great works of literature, and to which The Queue is a notable exception.

What exceeded my expectations was that despite the anonymity and occasional ambiguity of the characters and the situations, the dialogues, and hence the novel, were eminently readable.

As the blurb says, the book is a sly take on the dreary years of scarcity in the last few years of the USSR and an insightful look into the lives and minds of the ordinary citizens. The absurdity of the situation comes out in the dramatic end, as funny as it is ironic.

[Peony · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I flipped through the book before reading I realised that the text would be like a transcribed audio tape recorded in a queue..where I wouldn't even know the identity of the speakers. I have to admit I didn't expect to like this book much after that. But I was very wrong - it was fascinating! The chatter in the queue formed a beautiful, realistic microcosmos, a reflection of life in Soviet Russia. People loved and argued, children playing, fighting and whining, people got bored, drunk, sleepy..and compared the time Stalin was in charge to time they were having with Breznev. I feel like I would have just watched a documentary film in my head, that's how realistic it was. And the fact the people didn't have an identity made you think them as a mass, numbers, not individuals - that was very fitting for the Soviet atmosphere.

Ps: There was a joke told in the queue that I have heard few times here in Finland (the guy washing the floor and the cat), I never knew it was from this book!

[Héctor Genta · Rating 4 out of 5]

La coda: uno dei simboli dell'epoca sovietica, qui usata come pretesto per darci un quadro della società moscovita degli anni Ottanta. Con una prosa decisamente originale, fatta solo di dialoghi, Sorokin descrive un serpente a mille teste, del quale non si conoscono né l'inizio né la fine, un'entità astratta e reale al tempo stesso che vive una vita propria, fatta del caotico sovrapporsi delle vite di persone quasi senza identità, numeri della fila. Un fiume di gente che attende paziente il proprio turno per ore, di giorno e di notte, consumando i minuti in un'attesa godotiana, un cammino lento per arrivare ad assicurarsi un oggetto che non si sa neppure bene cosa sia. Ma non importa, quello che importa è stare in coda, esserci, non perdere il posto. Gente che vive alla giornata, che non sogna più, che si accontenta, quella che emerge dalla pagine del libro è un'umanità piegata, che accetta lo stato delle cose senza immaginare di poterle cambiare, un mondo dove la fanno da padrone il fatalismo e la rassegnazione, il nicevò.

[Steven Tomcavage · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like "Waiting for Godot", this book is for you. I personally love Godot, and I found this book just as enthralling. I can easily imagine it translated to the stage, especially since the entire text is nothing but dialog. No character descriptions, no setting descriptions. Just the back and forth that you would hear if you were standing in a line for days on end. And yet, somehow characters and familiar voices emerge. Relationships develop, fall apart, and rise from the ashes. The state of Russia in the 1970s is touched upon, and the notion that the privileged few get to skip the lines is front and center in the story. I was surprised when I reached the end of the book, because I had become so familiar with the characters I expected to hear them going on about their problems for many more pages. The relationship that develops at the end of the book is unexpected, especially the intensity of it, but it was a very satisfying way to end the tale.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps I am just overly enamored with Sorokin, but in each of his books he redeems all of the boring parts by something particularly grandiose but that seems simplistic. Perhaps it is the concept novel that makes its very goal creating a perfect believable world for the concept to thrive in. The whole world of this novel assumes the queue is important, wouldn't dare question it, not even in a vodka induced philosophical moment.

Slight of hand.

In this case its the sweet but cynical ending for our underacheaving hero Vadim, the only happy ending possible in a world so bored out its head with waiting, starved for that consumerist high. This conclusion paired with Sorokin's amazing afterward which waxes poetic on the bygone days of the queue and I can't help it - I'm swept away.

i hear that Day of the Oprichnik is coming in English. I can't wait.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered The Queue last year in 2012 when it was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker International Prize. It took my attention straight away because I had recently read The Concert Ticket by Olga Grushin, and it explores the same phenomenon: the Soviet-era queue for consumer goods.

The Queue however, is more innovative and challenging in style than The Concert Ticket. Sorokin’s novel consists entirely of fragments of conversation. There is no narrator, and it is up to the reader to find out for herself that the setting is somewhere in the suburbs of Moscow in the 1970s (dated by pop music references, i.e. the Beatles and the Stones). Even more confusing is that the reader has to work out who the characters are from dialogue...

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2014/03/08/th...

[Jacques · Rating 4 out of 5]

Geen roman, novelle, verhaal, toneel. Dialogen, gesprekken van mensen in de rij. Wachtend, aanschuivend om vooraan te komen en te kopen 'wat wordt aangeboden'. Mensen zonder naam noch gezicht. Die langzaamaan herkenbaar worden door hun taal. Bejaarden, kinderen, zatlappen, oplichters, intellectuelen. Mensen die lachen, vertellen, ruziën, flirten. Hun beweging is een schijnbeweging. De rij zit muurvast. Vooruitgang is hier en in de (Russische) maatschappij onmogelijk.