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The Thirteenth Category of Reason affirms Krzhizhanovsky as the twentieth century Gogol. In many ways, his satire remains more relevant than Gogol’s, and the swings from jaundiced irony to humor are abrupt, maintaining a reader’s attention. Last up, the titular story!

Red Snow continues to plumb a vein of horror. It’s clear why these stories could not be published when they were written in the 1920s, Krzhizhanovsky would have shared Isaac Babel’s fate.

The Branch Line continues Krzhizhanovsky’s themes of subverting both capitalist and Soviet ideals. A grasping protagonist sees the failure of previous utopia in explicit form and then tries to literally climb over a casualty of the revolution and the previous order.

The metafictional aspect to Someone Else’s Theme was developed quite well. Questions regarding who possesses a story: author or character were intriguing, and the ironic humor continues to shine throughout.

The Bookmark reminds me of Barthelme and Cortázar in the best ways. Most writers would kill for a single story from any one of the fragments Krzhizhanovsky crams into these forty pages. The speed with which he moves from one absurd premise to the next is remarkable.

The first story recalls Kafka and Gogol while suggesting the vein of dark ironies that Borges would explore. Looking forward to the rest of this collection.

Quadraturin