Paperback

English language

Published Sept. 8, 2008 by New York Review Books.

ISBN:
9781590172742
OCLC Number:
183265265

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4 stars (1 review)

Over the last twenty-five years Vladimir Sorokin has established himself as a provocative and unignorable presence in contemporary Russian literature, and The Queue, his first novel, is now recognized as a modern classic. Sorokin's brilliance―his formal daring, his keen eye and ear for the absurdities of life and language, his unequaled playfulness―is manifest in this sly comedy set during the late Soviet "years of stagnation." Thousands of citizens are in line for . . . nobody knows quite what, but the rumors are flying. Leather or suede? Jackets, jeans? Turkish, Swedish, maybe even American? It doesn't matter―if something's for sale, it's time to queue up. The endless line of expectant, irritable, inquisitive, bored but never less than determined people has a life and a will of its own, and Sorokin, in a tour de force, conveys that life entirely through the ebb and flow of conversation. We get to know …

4 editions