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THE MOSCOVIAD. By Yuri Andrukhovych. Trans. Vitaly Chernetsky. New York: Spuyten Duyvil, 2008. 185 pp. ISBN (paper) 978-1-933132-52-5.
Vitaly Chernetsky's excellent translation of Yuri (Iurii) Andrukhovych's Moskoviada brings an important and enjoyable work to English-speaking readers: one of the last Soviet-era novels written, and one of the first of post-Soviet Ukraine.
Published in 1993, The Moscoviad is a "day-in-the-life" account of Otto von F., a Ukrainian poet living in the dormitory of a literary institute in Moscow in the late 1980s. He is surrounded by other writers from "all corners" of the Soviet Union, who, he observes, bear more resemblance to literary characters than to writers.
The dormitory located at the center of the empire is, in reality, a completely marginal place, a communal labyrinth, where everyone minds everyone else's business, where numerous nationalities and minorities fight, drink, and hook up in a space smelling like a "garbage disposal, hangover, and sperm."
The dormitory is the first in a series of marginal settings of the novel, which include a...