Alexander Terekhov

There are strange books and there are strange books. And then there is 'The Rat Killer'. Written in the immediate post-Soviet period but still bearing all the hall marks of the USSR a couple of Muscovite rodent operatives are hired to rid a provincial town of rats before a presidential visit is scheduled to take place to, falsely, declare it sited at the source of the river Don and worthy of being considered a historic city and so join the lucrative tourist trade of the Golden Ring of towns around Moscow. So far so good. We get a discourse on the lives of rats and rat infestations and how to kill them interspersed with intrigue amongst local politicians and visits to the site of a huge, probably fake, archaeological dig unearthing an ancient Russian city. All told by one of the rat killers with thinly sketched characters appearing and reappearing in unlikley places and guises as the pace of proceedings hots up. If you were to compare this to visual art it would be cut up. There's a picture there somewhere but it's been carefully painted, dissected and reassembled with some parts missing. A fascinating exercise and I've learned something about rats but I'm not sure I'd like to do it all again.… (mais)

Begin mei kocht ik een e-reader, de Sony PRS 650. Het idee is dat ik Russische boeken voortaan op die e-reader zal lezen, zodat het niet langer nodig is om met loodzware koffers of rugzakken van Rusland naar Nederland te vliegen. Terekhovs Kamenny most werd het eerste boek dat ik op de e-reader las. Ik heb het vorig jaar toen ik in Moskou was niet gekocht omdat de papieren versie qua omvang en gewicht veel weg heeft van een baksteen. Zo werd Kamenny most het eerste Russische boek dat ik vanuit Nederland online in Rusland bestelde en betaalde.

Lees verder op deze pagina van mijn boekenblog.… (mais)