Die rote Pyramide: Erzählungen | "Wer Russland verstehen will, muss Vladimir Sorokin lesen." taz

by Vladimir Sorokin

Neue Erzählungen von Russlands Meister der Groteske.

In »Die rote Pyramide« versammelt Vladimir Sorokin, einer der wichtigsten zeitgenössischen Schriftsteller Russlands, neun Erzählungen aus den letzten Jahren, die alle auf ganz unnachahmliche Weise das Leben im postkommunistischen Russland aufs Korn nehmen.

In den neun Erzählungen, die Vladimir Sorokin für diesen Band zusammengestellt hat, geht es immer um eine durch den Verfall der Sowjetunion deformierte Gesellschaft. Das zeigt sich beim Einzelnen, wie in der Titelgeschichte, in der der junge Jura eine Vision erfährt, die ihn bis zum Ende seines Lebens nicht mehr loslässt. Es zeigt sich aber auch im Politischen, wie in der Geschichte »Lila Schwäne«, in der die russischen Atomsprengköpfe plötzlich in Zuckerhüte verwandelt wurden und man sich nicht anders zu helfen weiß, als einen wundertätigen Religionsgelehrten um Hilfe zu bitten. Und es zeigt sich im Zusammenspiel der Menschen, ihrer gesellschaftlichen Interaktion, wie in der Geschichte »Der Fingernagel«, in der vier befreundete Ehepaare zu einem Abendessen zusammenkommen, das auf Grund von Toilettenpapiermangel vollkommen außer Kontrolle gerät.

Vladimir Sorokin gelingt in diesem Erzählungsband das Kunststück, aus scheinbar unabhängigen Einzelgeschichten ein Ganzes zu schaffen. Die Komposition ist strukturiert und ausbalanciert. Sorokin zeigt einmal mehr, wie meisterhaft er auch die kleine Form und verschiedenste stilistische Mittel beherrscht und eröffnet seinen Leser*innen einen Blick auf Russlands Gegenwart und Vergangenheit, die so vergangen eben doch nicht ist.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Russia, Russian Literature, Classics, Literature, 21st Century

185 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 10, 2022

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

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Russian literary superstar Sorokin predicts the end of Putin and the dictator's fall from his crumbling pyramid of power here. In this collection of short stories, an invisible red pyramid radiates noise that infiltrates the Russian people - sounds familiar? Sorokin's often crass texts investigate the demoralization, brutality, and psychological deformation of post-Soviet Russia. What the mind suppresses comes back as dreams or impulsive violence. A whole country turns into a grotesque with nuclear sugar fields.

No wonder the ruling regime despises Sorokin: He wants a better Russia.

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!

this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.

this is the SEVENTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your annual reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards.

GR has deleted the pages for several of the stories i've read in previous years without warning, leaving me with a bunch of missing reviews and broken links, which makes me feel shitty. i have tried to restore the ones i could, but my to-do list is already a ball of nightmares, so that's still a work-in-progress. however, because i don't have a lot of time to waste, and because my brain has felt scraped clean ever since my bout with covid, i'm not going to bother writing much in the way of reviews for these, in case GR decides to scrap 'em again.

i am doing my best.
merry merry.

DECEMBER 8



moving away from the tordotcom site for a bit with this prickly little contemporary russian story about the pyramid of the red roar and how it infects those in its midst. awfully timely, as well as funny AND grim.

fun fact: the whole catalyst of the story revolves around a man taking the wrong train:

To put it plainly, Yura confused Fryazino with Fryazevo and went the wrong way. Natasha had explained everything to him: go to Yaroslavsky Station and take the train toward Fryazevo or toward Schelkovo. Her station was Zagoryanskaya and not all trains stopped there. The train toward Fryazevo did, but the train toward Fryazino didn’t. Yura ended up on the train toward Fryazino.

and i only decided to read this story because my dumb brain saw sorokin, mixed it up with Fyodor Sologub, and got all excited. the two authors' lifespans never overlapped on this earth, but in my brain, they are having drinks now.

“Could you tell me when we’ll be at Zagoryanka?” he asked a thin old man with a cane and a pail in a string bag.

“Never,” the old man replied laconically. “You got on the wrong train.”

“What?”

“Well . . . the train to Fryazino has never, ever stopped in Zagoryanka.”

still, sometimes there are benefits to taking the wrong train/reading the wrong author, and—like the narrator in this story, i have discovered something new because of a silly error. AND WE BOTH LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFT—oh wait, nevermind.

read it for yourself here:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

it also comes with a companion piece:

https://www.newyorker.com/books/this-...

2022:

DECEMBER 1: PORGEE'S BOAR - JONATHAN CARROLL
DECEMBER 2: SKELETON SONG - SEANAN MCGUIRE
DECEMBER 3: JUDGE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING MANUSCRIPT - LAVIE TIDHAR
DECEMBER 4: QUANDARY AMINU VS THE BUTTERFLY MAN - RICH LARSON
DECEMBER 5: IN MERCY, RAIN - SEANAN MCGUIRE
DECEMBER 6: CHOKE - SUYI DAVIES OKUNGBOWA
DECEMBER 7: THIS PLACE IS BEST SHUNNED - DAVID ERIK NELSON

FROM THE BEFORETIMES:

2016 short story advent calendar
2017 short story advent calendar
2018 short story advent calendar
2019 short story advent calendar
2020 short story advent calendar
2021 short story advent calendar

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sollen wir in der gegenwärtigen Situation alles Russische boykottieren? Diese Meinung teile ich überhaupt nicht, ich bin absolut dafür, Werke der Kriegsunterstützer zu meiden, aber die Regimekritiker mehr als sonst heranzuziehen, vor allem ihre Meinung einzuholen und zu verbreiten.

Ein solcher sehr intensiver Kritiker der russischen Gesellschaft und Politik ist seit jeher Vladimir Sorokin, dessen Sammlung von Kurzgeschichten heuer übersetzt herauskam.

Ich habe schon seit Jahren mit vielen Werken dieser Literaturform in zweierlei Hinsicht meine Probleme. Sehr viele Shortstories sind für sich einzeln betrachtet nicht wirklich gut, aber auch nicht schlecht, sie sind einfach meist nur zu kurz und ähneln eher abgebrochenen Szenen oder auch nicht vollendeten Fragmenten von Romanteilen, als dass sie als wirklich liebevoll abgeschlossene Werke und dramaturgisch auf hohem Niveau mit einem kompletten Spannungsbogen konzipierte eigenständige Stücke bezeichnet werden könnten.

Auch in diesem Fall hatte ich wieder meine typischen Schwierigkeiten. Ich mag Sorokins Vorstellkraft sehr, seine verklausulierte Mystik, seine indirekten Metaphern, mit denen er auf einer Meta-Ebene etwas vermitteln will, aber bei einigen dieser Stücke vor allem zu Beginn verpufft das alles, denn sie sind für mich zu kurz, um irgendetwas zu verstehen. Es ist, als würde ich zwar die Sprache, aber die Semantik dahinter nicht checken – ich fühlte mich streckenweise wie die düpierte Zensurbeamtin, an der der Autor sein Stück vorbeischummeln will und die zu dumm ist, die Regimekritik zu identifizieren, weil Sorokin so indirekt formuliert.

Das zweite Problem ist oft auch den Verlagen geschuldet, denn viele dieser Sammlungen werden meist recht unzusammenhängend und konzeptlos quer durch die gesamte Schaffensperiode der Autor*innen in einem Band zusammengestellt. Sehr oft fehlt einfach eine befriedigende, spannende übergeordnete Thematik mit einem roten Faden. Leider muss ich diese Kritik auch hier teilweise ansetzen.

Bisher erklären mir nur vier Geschichten wirklich russisches Leben, russische Gesellschaft, russische Politik und die DNA des Russentums, welche mir übrigens gut gefallen haben:

Geschichte 1: Die rote Pyramide: Kommunismus und Beziehungen, wie die persönliche Entwicklung und Entfaltung von Individuen blockiert wird
Geschichte 5: Der Fingernagel: ein russisches Saufgelage der Oberschicht und absolute Eskalation eines Dinnerabends
Geschichte 6: Lila Schwäne: russische Regierungs- und Gesellschaftskritik und der völlig bekloppte orthodoxe Aberglaube, also Kritik an der Seele der Gesellschaft und dem russischen DNA-System
Geschichte 7: Der Tag des Tschekisten: Wie generiert das gegenwärtige System russische Terrorsoldaten des Grauens

Die restlichen fünf Shortstorys sind bedauerlicherweise so maskiert im Plot und von der Figurenentwickllung her angesetzt und formuliert, sie könnten daher überall in der Welt, beziehungsweise in einer Traumwelt angesiedelt sein, zwei davon würden sogar besser in eine Zusammenstellung von phantastischen Geschichten passen. Hier habe ich so gut wie nichts zur russischen Thematik herausgefunden und das war dann auch der für mich enttäuschende Teil dieser Sammlung.

Fazit: Wer prinzipiell ein Fan von Kurzgeschichten ist, sollte sich diesen Band nicht entgehen lassen, wer dieselben Probleme wie ich mit dieser Literaturform verortet, sollte sich unbedingt einmal einen Roman von Sorokin gönnen. Ich war von Manaraga schwer begeistert.

[Márcio · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is quite a short story published by The New Yorker. When going to the birthday party of the girl he is interested in, Yura confuses Fryazino with Fryazevo, thus taking the wrong train line. He is told to exit at Green Pine station and wait for the coming train on the other side of the platform. Out of nothing, he notices a fat man with quite a white face always looking straight ahead. At first, he is afraid, the man seems dead, but the conversation moves on, till his train comes by. Years later, while his heart is failing, the warning he received from the main at the platform comes true, and he finally can see the Red Pyramid.

This tale reminded me of stories like We by Evgeny Zamyatin and 1984 by George Orwell. Mankind's fate is one of being controlled, not able to think, to decide, to thrive in life, but just receive orders and perform them, like automats, like nothing close to the human consciousness.

[od1_40reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Red Pyramid’ is my second work by Sorokin, having read ‘Blue Lard’ earlier this year. I also have a copy of ‘Ice Trilogy’, which comes highly recommended. Both Pyramid and Lard are translated by Max Lawton, and Sorokin/Lawton seem to be something of a dream team; these works I’m sure cannot be easy to directly translate.

If you’ve not read Sorokin before, it’s worth doing a little research beforehand so you know what you’re getting into. Not only are these stories utterly wild, fu@ked up, pornographic, and nausea-inducing, Sorokin also experiments with language and prose, leaving some passages almost unreadable and unintelligible in places. And that’s all part of the ride folks. Though I will say that here in ‘Red Pyramid’ Sorokin demonstrates a range of styles from the gut turning/almost gibberish, to the standard, liner, and perhaps even folk tale style of story telling. Sorokin’s full-colour palette is on display.

Who should read Sorokin? You definitely need a high tolerance level, strong stomach and a love for/interest in experimental literature. Fans of writers like Sade, Bataille, Genet, Dennis Cooper and New Juche will most certainly appreciate.

Highlights for me from this collection would be Obelisk, A Month in Dachau, Nastya, House Soup and Tiny Tim. There are certain characters from these stories that are going to leave a very long lasting impression.

[Conny · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Die rote Pyramide» versammelt neun Kurzgeschichten, die das Leben im postkommunistischen Russland aufs Korn nehmen. Das ist mal grotesk, wenn sich die russischen Atomsprengköpfe in Zucker verwandeln («Lila Schwäne») oder ein Abendessen unter Freunden aufgrund fehlenden Toilettenpapiers massiv ausartet («Der Fingernagel»). Auch bitterböse Parabeln auf den Zustand einer männlich dominierten Gesellschaft («Das rostige Mädchen») oder auf fehlgeleitete Sowjetnostalgie («Der Tag des Tschekisten») fehlen nicht. Die Geschichten sind düster, zynisch und ein sprachlicher Genuss – eine tolle Sammlung.

[Alex O'Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uneven but generally very enjoyable

[Bhaskar Thakuria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inside Yuri reigned
SILENCE.
With the last of his strength, he straightened up.
Clutched the railing.
And suddenly saw the red pyramid.
It towered up over Red Square, its base taking up its entire area. The pyramid vibrated as it emitted the red roar. The roar came forth in waves, flooding everything around it like a tsunami, flowing off beyond the horizon and toward all four corners of the earth. The human race was drowning in this red roar. Drowning as it tried to paddle through. Walking, driving, standing, sitting, sleeping—men, women, old people, children. The red roar overwhelmed all of it. Its waves beat beat furiously against every person person inside every person person light light and the red roar roar beats beats out of the pyramid pyramid in order to extinguish extinguish the light light of man man and extinguish extinguish cannot cannot and why why beats beats this frighteningly frighteningly and dumbly dumbly red waves waves beat beat and cannot cannot beat beat and cannot cannot why why beat beat this stupidly stupidly furiously furiously stupidly stupidly six-wingèd six-wingèd you here here next to next to six-wingèd six-wingèd you bright bright you most most you eternal eternal you hello hello six-wingèd six-wingèd back then back then you were were different different fat fat funny funny white white shoes ankle boots shoes your name name will will you not not tell tell me your your name name name.
- from the story Red Pyramid(2017).

This has been a most varied and motley collection, with stories brimming with black humor, pessimism, sex, sadistic rituals, orgies, and brutal malevolence, from one of the foremost and pioneering Russian writers of his generation. A towering figure in the current Russian literary scene Sorokin's literary career- starting with Moscow literary underground in the 1980s- has been nothing short of being controversial and a potential eyesore, especially for the Putin regime. He has been nothing short of being an incendiary, stoking literary censorship and challenging the traditionally held notions of the merits of literary tradition and 'what merits as good enough for the literary press and criticism'; and, that too, in a country which does not have a free press and which treasures its Orthodox Christain values. Sorokin himself had been a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy in his mid-twenties, and that at the very apogee of Soviet godlessness. So it was clearly established that this was a young writer serious about the assertion in the Gospel of John that “the world is passing away, along with its desires. But he who does the will of God will abide forever.” So the very ungodliness of his writings, and especially his short fiction belies the fact of his devout upbringings in Orthodoxy but, in essence, it underlies a blatant pessimism in the face of Russian and Soviet life and politics, and his serious belief in 'a world that is passing away, along with its desires'. He has been the agent provocateur of Russian letters, so much so that a story like “A Month in Dachau”(1990) led to him being termed as the Russian Marquis de Sade. This story published a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall: a polymorphously perverse exploration of a counter-reality in which, presumably, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was kept.

Well it took me quite a while to finish this book. Most of it I can allude to the allegorical tale "Nastya"(2000). Indeed finishing it I was left with such a distaste for life and the utter ungodliness of the whole scheme of things that I could not read anything for almost more than a week. Probably the most abhorrent and terrifying story I have ever read, it was my first encounter with something written that really made me sick. The whole thing of a family cannibalizing their sixteen year old daughter at the turn of the last century, and their relishing every morsel of her flesh in a dinner party, and at the same time depicting the whole affair as some sort of orgiastic ritual- is enough to freak out an average reader. This is real fucked up stuff, so that one must take care so that it does not brainfuck you- this is sadism for sadism's sake. The whole grisly ritual of roasting alive Nastya on a huge shovel over a heated oven, and the graphic details of her ordeals on the heated stove is too blood curdling and hair raising. I was left with hardly any appetite after that.

But, the noted British writer Will Self in his introduction writes:

A story such as Sorokin’s “Nastya,” which subjects that Chekhovian sense of douceur de la vie specific to a feudal society vermiculated from within (a perception of the plays and stories which, perhaps, owes its salience almost entirely to the retrospective glow cast on them by the fiery revolution ahead), to the stress test of familial and socially enjoined cannibalism as a rite of passage, is nonetheless not, fundamentally, a literary matter. A revolution may not be a dinner party, but a dinner party at the Sablins’ manor house in the last summer before the twentieth century can be, in Sorokin’s universe, a revolution. One that should return his readers to the elemental, the Real: the material-organic substratum, the ever-inchoate, ever-evolving stuff of life that, in this view—an article of faith for many contemporary Westerners—is all life is.....

.......The black pearl given to Nastya by Father Andrei, the pervert priest, for her birthday, is then swallowed by her, tempered, and eaten again—passing through two members of a female line, and fire, before ending up as the smoking, curvilinear mirror within which Sorokin scries a whole world: “black sky, black clouds, black lake, black boats, black pines, black juniper, black shallows, black footbridges, black willows, black hillock, black church, black path, black meadow, black alley of trees, black manor, and black woman, opening the black window of a black bedroom.”

Elsewhere he writes:

...the objects that transact the business of Sorokin’s fictions....urge us on, into a realm at once monist and transcendental: this single black pearl, swallowed by a sixteen-year-old girl, reflects everything; while in “Horse Soup”(2000) (my favorite story in the entire collection), what becomes of paramount importance—the active principle, rippling through an entire reality—is the act of consuming, rather than what is consumed, as Sorokin shows how a very human folie à deux can build a world entire.

In “The Black Horse with the White Eye”(2004), the universalizing monad is the title itself—in “Monoclone”(2009) (probably the most violent story in the entire collection-which features an old man being impaled with an axe-head), it’s a deformity—while the title signals the synecdochal character of the tale; in “Tiny Tim”(2009), as discussed, it’s the bit of holy bread the pet hamster didn’t eat, and which the little girl hid down the back of a record player. And in “White Square”(2017), it’s a TV pilot of a televised debate—whither Russia—that provides the Sorokinian lift-off point, such that a re-creation of The Flaying of Marsyas becomes this curious object, one that simultaneously enacts the fate or the world, is the world, and yet is also a mere part of it. In Sorokin’s postlapsarian fictions, all actions can be communion, all objects prosphora.

Regarding the violence and pornography that abounds short fiction Will Self comments thus:

FUNDAMENTAL to the fiction of Vladimir Sorokin is not the pornography his detractors accuse him of producing but the paradoxical topologies his carefully spun tales evoke. Each of his stories is a sort of mutant Möbius strip, In which to follow the narrative is to experience the real and the fantastic as simultaneously opposed and coextensive. There comes a point—it may be early on; it may be comparatively late—when the strictures of orthodox plotting seem to overwhelm its author, such that idiom and plain speech converge even as events spiral ineluctably out of human control....

.....There are too many transgressions—of taste, or propriety, or morality, of the very temporal order itself—on display here for these to be, in any meaningful sense, what the story is about; indeed, for Sorokin, what-ifery is, in and of itself, sufficient to fully supplant what-aboutery.......

.....Sorokin’s propensity for pitilessly describing violent delights and their violent ends may well be an enormous tease, a sort of peek-a-boo, where no matter that the reader tries to look away, he can’t help being returned to the central problem of faith—and its conspicuous lack in himself—again and again....

.....It is the genius of Sorokin’s fiction—both overall and particularly in these stories—to use the lexicon of pornography to show how, in our benighted era, East and West, Red and White, right and left, good and evil, Slavophile and Europhile, theist and atheist alike have all been complicit, not just in treating the earth and its resources as standing reserve but each other’s bodies, souls, and divine natures as well.

[Ryan Berger · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most fucked up thing I've ever read by a country mile. Sorokin has been described as the Russian Marquis de Sade and not unfoundedly. He's been persecuted into a self-exile by the Russian government for his boundary-pushing, sometimes pornographic stories that shocked me in ways I could not possibly have expected.

The middling rating doesn't stem from offended sensibilities but rather comments on the sheer unevenness of this collection (some gripping stories, some total duds) and a potential failing on my part in terms of lacking the proper context to understand the axe Sorokin is grinding a lot of the time. Sorokin is always, in one way or another, discussing Russia. It's people, it's government, its authoritarianism and casual brutality. Despite the unparalleled heights of craven, stomach turning images that Sorokin generates-- the figures of the political cartoon he's sketching fail to come into focus for this reader. This too has a mixed effect. At times I was able to follow along or get the gist of the kind of thing Sorokin is satirizing and was still captivated even if I was terribly confused (the story about the pervert on the train comes to mind. A little hard to tell what Sorokin is talking about but the story carries you along regardless. Another like "A Month in Dachau" is even more confusing and yet impossible to look away from). and other times I could not even begin to wrap my mind around what the joke is ("White Square" is completely incomprehensible). I'm sure it's quite cutting.

Sorokin has a South Park sense of humor that is especially evident early in his career but even as it matured, it is hard not to see him as a literary Shock Jock at times. He's a provocateur and proud of it. If I lack the cultural context to understand this odd bird, that's a failure on my part-- but poop jokes are poop jokes in every language. Sodomy and cannibalism make for richer metaphors, and all perversities are falling off the trees in this one.

There is at least one outstanding story in this collection in "Tiny Tim", which is fabulously as mysterious as it is absurd.

I'm hoping Sorokin's novels are more coherent.

[Bianca Sandale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why this guy hasn't been killed by the funny little russian is something i don't understand,
critic, sarcastic, funny, sexy,
simply great

[Brock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like a car crash one can't look away from, "Red Pyramid" delivers a puzzling collection of stories by the Russian émigré Vladimir Sorokin. Over the past four decades, Sorokin has written a steady stream of grotesque, inventive works that stretch classical Russian prose into pure absurdity. Bolstered by curious English-speaking readers, Sorokin has secured a new cult following in recent years; this collection showcases his ability to shock, provoke, and disgust.

The selected stories range from erotic encounters to reports set in Dachau to nuclear warheads transformed into refined sugar, each beginning with unmistakable Soviet realism before abruptly shifting into surrealist spectacle. The standout story “Nastya” follows a sixteen-year-old girl who is prepared, cooked, and served as the main dish at a grandiose feast. As the attendees carefully select their desired cuts, the conversation centers on Nietzschean philosophy and the consequences of a society rooted in such ideals: “Every society that kicks the fallen when they're down ends up falling itself” (p. 86). Another notable story is “Horse Soup,” in which a former criminal solicits a young woman to eat in front of him while he convulses with pleasure. In the title story, a man named Yuri converses with an odd gentleman at a train stop who tells him that Lenin “called forth the pyramid of the red road” (p. 254), before Yuri later witnesses the immensity of the pyramid during a fatal heart attack.

Sorokin’s frequent use of fecal symbolism is sure to unsettle new readers, but once understood, it emerges as a central element of his enterprise. From its inception, the Soviet Union—and Russia to this day—has aggressively promulgated nationalism and state-endorsed rhetoric. In stories like "Obelisk," Sorokin portrays party slogans and the glorification of the past as ideological excrement, force-fed to generation after generation. Despite his undeniable wit and amusing narratives, his thematic depth often leads into an abyss rather than a path towards enlightenment. This can be seen in “White Square,” which follows a panel of guests on a TV show, each sharing a different analogical view of Russia. The story feels guided toward a specific message, but like many of the others, it flies off the rails into obscurity. Although it may be Sorokin’s intention to leave interpretation and societal examination to his readers, greater clarity would likely improve reception among an otherwise nonplussed audience.

Rooted in cultural critique and surrealism, Sorokin thrills in "Red Pyramid", while missing more than he lands. His prose knows no bounds, but when left uncontrolled, it descends into ambiguity at a pace too furious to track. Readers familiar with his style will find themselves right at home in his maniacal crafted stories, but his enigmatic endings and experimental features will keep him secluded from a mainstream audience. For that reason, Sorokin remains one of Russia’s best-kept secrets and a doomed recommendation for unsuspecting friends.

[Yiz County · Rating 4 out of 5]

a nightmarish collection of revolting russian stories, most of them about eating things you arent supposed to eat.

sorokin's treatment of russian life is similar to kara walker's treatment of the antebellum south. panoramas of barbed cartoonish barbarity that reveal as much about the spectator as they do about history and politics.

obelisk and natya were the most memorable. it will be difficult to scrub them from memory. the later stories from the 2010s get a bit predictably unpredictable, pulling out all the postmodern tricks: characters from movies rock up, protagonists get abruptly killed for no reason, and most stories end in the afterlife or in nature-doco descriptions of animals. either this will thrill you or tire you.

the stories in red pyramid reminded me of the comics (with an x!!!) me and my friends used to make where we'd each take turns adding a panel onto the last, the stories quickly falling into incomprehensibility and narrative chaos. BUT, our comics did have spirit, a yucky, krazy spirit and thats what i like about these horrible stories

[kaelan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vladimir Sorokin is, in my view, one of the most interesting writers working today. This collection spans a good chunk of his career, from nascent late-Soviet pieces such as "Obelisk" (think Chuck Palahniuk at his most grotesque, but more allegorical, more intellectual, and far, far weirder) to newer Putin-era works such as the standout "Violet Swans." At their best, these stories are truly transcendent. Sorokin's virtuosity comes through even in translation, and he has an extraordinary knack for the symbolic—images, objects, and even entire scenes resonate mysteriously beyond the literal—that is rare to see outside of poetry.

A word of caution: these stories can be highly disturbing, though Sorokin never seems concerned with mere shock value. For daring readers with strong stomachs, however, this collection comes highly recommended.

[Grant James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Speechless, not sure if in a good way or bad way

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Also miss girl, 'Der Fingernagel'????? Slay af, hat mich komplett mitgerissen und umgehauen und ich werde sie wieder lesen. 'Hiroshima'???? Auch ganz spannend, faszinierend und mysteriös, aber am Ende leider etwas unrund. 'Die rote Pyramide', 'Das schwarze Pferd mit dem weißen Auge' und 'Wellen'??? Ganz cool, überraschende Augenblickfänge und alles in allem in Ordnung. 'Das rostige Mädchen' und 'Das Tuch'?? Nach dem Lesen fast gleich wieder vergessen. 'Lila Schwäne'?? Am Anfang boooring, wird tatsächlich aber ab ca. der Hälfte anziehender. Und alter wtf war 'Der Tag des Tschekisten'? Komplettpaket von Vergewaltigung, emotionalem Missbrauch & Erpressung und Übergriff-Fantasien von Mann auf Frau. Die haut wirklich einen großen dent in die sonst okay-bis-coolen Kurzgeschichten...

[Maiia Pinchuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

короткий рассказ с очень хорошей работой со словом — безысходность, страх и подступающий ужас в конце

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first go with Sorokin. I had to set this aside for awhile, for although the writing is excellent and intriguing, the earlier work was especially, viscerally, repulsive to me and I wasn’t sure if I had the stomach for making it through this collection. There’s also the persistent feeling that I am missing a great deal in these stories due to my cursory knowledge of Russian culture and history at best. I persisted, however, and I ended up enjoying the latter half of the collection more than the earlier work in this book. “Blue Lard” is on the docket for me yet; perverse intrigue remains, and dare I say I look forward to it…

[amelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first this reminded me of when I tried to read Sade and gave up. But here, Sorokin’s unabashed employment of taboo is tempered with a kind of silliness that hooks you. I liked the expressiveness of his language and how it devolves into fragments. It feels kind of fever dream-y or like a child’s story—you think it’s going to keep going one way and then he abandons that plotline to focus on something else. Really impossible to describe all the freak shit going on in this book but I enjoyed it.

[Christine Convery · Rating 3 out of 5]

5 stars for Nastya but 1 to 2 stars for everything else

[Sergio Segura · Rating 4 out of 5]

1) Incredible prose
2) Brilliant characterization
3) The intrusive thoughts win

[Alfie Baker · Rating 1 out of 5]

Please don’t read this

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

We have now entered the new era of Sorokin English translations. With the release of Blue Lard and Red Pyramid last month and the upcoming release of Dispatches From The District Committee from Dalkey Archive later this year, 2024 has long been anticipated by anglophonic Sorokin fans such as myself.

I have long been looking forward to reading Blue Lard, pretty much since I first learned of Sorokin. I received copies of Blue Lard and Red Pyramid in the mail the week following their release and with all of my anticipation for Blue Lard what did I do? I decided to read Red Pyramid instead.

The idea of delving into short stories seemed more appealing with the amount of time I was able to dedicate to reading as of late. Short stories are an area of Sorokin’s work that I have barely explored and yet have heard much praise for.

I’m glad to say that this praise is wholly justified. I’ve read a good variety of what is available in English of Sorokin’s works, some of which hasn’t worked for me. Honestly reading this collection of short stories has been one of the most enjoyable and engaging times I’ve had with the work of Sorokin.

The nature of a short story collection makes for a wide possibility of takeaways due to the variety in narrative and subject matter but I found this to be one of my favorite collections I’ve read. Like any short story collection, there are some stories that I resonated with more than others but the ones I enjoyed, I really enjoyed.

Stories such as Obelisk, Nastya, Horse Soup, and Tiny Tim are some of my favorites; Horse Soup probably being the stand out for me. As some with Crohns, the descriptions of being disgusted by food, while not a one to one of my experience, are hauntingly similar and something I haven’t read written like this before. The story also feels like a Kafka story set in a more contemporary world.

I think the great value of this collection is just how well it covers Sorokin’s career as a writer. This collection holds works from 1981 to 2017, sequencing them mostly in chronological order. This is a great way to see how Sorokin has grown as a writer, offering a diverse sampling of what he is capable of.

The early works are formulaic but that doesn’t mean they don’t push boundaries. Essentially taking the Socialist Realism genre and turning it on its head. As the stories progress through the 90s, into the 21st Century, Sorokin shows he is capable of more than just an irreverence for what came before. With each story I was amazed with what Sorokin was capable of in terms of storytelling and usage of literary prowess. The works at the end of this collection are nearly unrecognizable to those in the beginning.

Beyond the growth of Sorokin as a writer during this time period, this stretch of about 35 years is also a time of great change in the history of Russia. Many of these stories revolve around Russia and the Russian identity. Depending on when it was written and published, the Russian identity meant different things or had different issues at the forefront.

Like any work of Sorokin, a knowledge of Russian history and culture only enhances the reading experience. I think that the more informed you are the more you will enjoy these stories but that isn’t to say that you cannot enjoy these stories without that context. The irreverence and experimentation can be appreciated by anyone looking for a more challenging work.

Many of these stories benefit from a reread as you are often left wondering if what you read actually just happened. If it wasn’t printed on the page I’d be hard pressed to believe any of this was really imagined at one point. While an enjoyable experience it is not an easy or quick one.
I do want to applaud the translation efforts of Max Lawton here. At this point I’ve read Sorokin’s work from a few different translators and I do think the translation is part of the reason why I enjoyed this collection so much in comparison with what else I’ve read of Sorokin’s.

The only other work of Sorokin’s I’ve read translated by Lawton was Telluria. My own personal reading tastes are what really held me back from enjoying that work, as short vignettes of 1-3 pages are a hard thing for me to get into and I do think it would benefit from a reread. For this reason I wasn’t drawn one way or the other in terms of the translation but here you really feel the energy of the surreal and unusual on each page.

If you are interested in sampling this work feel free to check out the following links:

Hiroshima by Vladimir Sorokin published in Joyland last year
https://joylandmagazine.com/fiction/h...

Me reading/analyzing Obelisk
https://youtu.be/c6sen5F6x8g

[Alex Watt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of poop.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

unhinged, unpredictable, depraved

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a collection of short stories by Russian contemporary writer Vladimir Sorokin. A lot of them were concerned with critiques of Sowjet/Russian mentality/society. His writing style is a mix of grotesque satire and phantastical, symbolist passages. I enjoyed almost all of the stories, but some were so buried in symbolism that it was hard for me to grasp any meaning. The satires were the best ones (Der Fingernagel, Lila Schwäne)

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thirteen Vladimir Sorokin short stories are collected here, spanning from the 1980s Soviet Union era to the turn of the millennium under Putin. Each story is a shocker in its own right. Will Self contributes the Introduction to this recently published New York Review Books edition, wherein he writes: "Each of his stories is a sort of mutant Möbius strip, in which to follow the narrative is to experience the real and the fantastic as simultaneously opposed and coextensive."

The list of thirteen includes Nastya, a novella that prompted Pro-Kremlin activists to accuse Sorokin of promoting cannibalism since the story revolves around a family cooking their sixteen-year-old daughter in an oven and then sitting down to a ritual banquet where daughter Nastya is served up as the main dish. Oh, those queasy, uptight Russkies slamming Vladimir! Actually, things might have been different if the Russian public knew and appreciated the fact that Vladimir Sorokin, a devout Christian his entire adult life, might have written Nastya with what Will Self had in mind when he observed the genius of Sorokin's fiction is "to use the lexicon of pornography to show how, in our benighted ers, East and West, Red and White, right and left, good and evil, Slavophile and Europhile, theist and atheist alike have all been complicit, not just in treating the earth and its resources as standing reserve but each other's bodies, souls, and divine nature as well."

In Passing Through, we're presented with buffoonish office workers, all part of a nasty, complex propaganda producing Soviet bureaucracy. Sorokin bestows expanded meaning to what it is to be coarse, crude, and completely nauseating, Get a whiff of this snatch taking place in a boss's office: “Georgy Ivanovich passed gas. His hairless buttocks swayed. Something brown appeared between his cachectic cheeks, then began to grow and lengthen rapidly. Fomin swallowed convulsively, twisted away from the wall, and put his hands over the mock-up of the album, shielding it from this brown sausage. The sausage broke off and fell into his hands. Another one came out right after it – a thinner, lighter sausage. Fomin took that one into his hands as well.”

With A Hard-Nosed Proposition, there's a surreal office scene with a huge helping of the ghastly grotesque. A boy opens a package, a gift, from a man who lusts after him. "A sloppily severed segment of a man's face had been squeezed into the box. The edges of the cleaved, shriveled skin were caked in gore, and a single unshaven cheek was visible between glossy blue cheekbone and twisted jaw: tobacco-stained teeth, two of which were crowned in gold, stuck out from between split lips; a whitish eye, squeezed forth from blackened socket, reposed in the corner of the box."

As a way of sharing a richer taste of Sorokin in short story mode, I'll focus on the title piece, Red Pyramid, a tale of great depth, wonder, and magic.

RED PYRAMID
Poor Yura. Despite Natasha's clear explanation of which train to take, Yura confused Frayazino with Fryazero and ended up heading in the wrong direction. Now, he's bound to be late for Natasha's birthday party. And to think, he was just starting to develop a fondness for this short, slender, nimble gymnast who always had a smile on her face. "There was always a wave of joy emanating from Natasha. Her hair, black and tied up in two tight braids encircling her head." For those readers old enough, Natasha will surely evoke memories of sweet Natalia Kuchinskaya, everyone's little darling who beautifully graced the 1968 Olympics with her winning performances and medals.

Yura, a journalism student at Moscow State University, is carrying two birthday gifts in his yellow leather bag: a bottle of champagne and a book of Walt Whitman poems. "Damn!" he curses his own idiocy for catching the wrong train. Retracing his steps and cursing all the while, Yura finally arrives at a station named "Green Pine," where he waits on the deserted platform, sometimes running and jumping in his fury. “A pine day!!” “I pine for the train!!” “OH, SUCK A PINUS!!! WHEN! WILL! IT! COME!?” “In eight minutes,” someone shouts. Yura turns around and is shocked – a man is sitting on the bench he just did jump over pretending he was a track-and-field star. "This was so unexpected that Yura stopped in his tracks. A fat, puffy-faced man in light summer clothes sat looking at Yura."

Yura engages in conversation with this fat man possessing no expression on his face. Absolutely (author italics) no expression at all. The manner in which the fat man responds to Yura's inquiries and the content of his words propel this extraordinary conversation into the realm of impossible magic. Above all else, the fat man speaking of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as: "The man who called forth the pyramid of the red roar." Yura quickly learns that this pyramid serves as the origin of the ceaseless red roar.

Where is this pyramid located? According to the fat man, it stands on Red Square, its base encompassing the entire square, continuously emitting the red roar for a specific reason: "To destroy mankind's intrinsic structure." For what purpose? "So that humans stop being humans." The fat man imparts a critical detail: Lenin didn't build the pyramid; rather, he simply called it into being. Then comes an added jolt: the fat man informs Yura that Yura cannot see the pyramid, but he himself can.

What happens to Yura thereafter, especially years later when, as a middle-aged family man, he gets out of his car, stands on a bridge over the Moscow River, and peers out to Red Square, is for Vladimir Sorokin to tell.

I have reread this stunning short story multiple times, a story that, in my modest judgment, is a work of pure perfection.

Once more, I've only touched on four of the thirteen short stories gathered here, superbly translated by Max Lawton. You'll undoubtedly want to read all of them yourself, along with the incisive nine-page introductory essay penned by the one and only Will Self.


Vladimir Sorokin, born 1955

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the introduction by Will Self: "There comes a point...when the strictures of orthodox plotting seem to overwhelm the author, such that idiom and plain speech converge even as events spiral ineluctably out of human control." Exactly so. My impression is that of someone attempting to write ironic short stories of Soviet/Russian life but can't stop exploding into an outrageous and profane scream at the sheer overwhelming oppressiveness of it all. Sometimes this sort of works, but the overall impression in this collection is of noisecore or certain genres of metal where the music predictably explodes into a cacophony - where the first explosion might catch you off guard but the twelfth not so much.

[Tom]

A Month in Dachau (despite its seemingly somewhat banal surface themes of WW2 war crime equivalence (there's more there if you dig)), Nastya, Horse Soup, and Hiroshima are all micro-masterpieces of different literary modes, and the rest of the collection fitfully shapes itself around them. Same reaction with the previous two Sorokin's I've read; a great time for sickos who've taken too many Russian Lit/History courses, but not something I'd go parading around the town square as a bible for all. Nonetheless, for me specifically, this is close to gospel.

[Terence · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read quite a few of Sorokin's works but never a short story. This is a great collection, two stories could probably be considered novellas. But the rest are quick shots and full of his strange sense of anarchy and scatology. Sorokin is a master provocateur, how stories rife with Rabelaisian grotesqueries and an erudition of the Russian literary tradition...I know that makes it sound smart - and it is - these stories are strange, psychotic, weird, surreal and insanely political. There's as much meaning as there is absurdity and that is why I have read as much as has been translated.

[Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a crazy collection that I think Weird Lit fans would really enjoy. Stories start off innocent but always manage to devolve into surrealism and fecal smearing. The title story feels like something Thomas Ligotti would dream up, while the avant-garde concentration camp vacation adventure A Month In Dachau feels more in line with what guys like Blake Butler are putting out. Every story is political, and every story has poop jokes; another reviewer compared it to South Park, which isn't too far off. Pop on your Mr Hanky onesie and dig in!