Zhornov and the Social Processes

The life of the bureaucrat Zhornov consists of four primary elements: an office with bothersome subordinates, two bottles of port after work, conversations with the cleaning lady, and office sex with the amorous Dina. A star of the Leningrad underground and winner of the Andrei Bely Prize, Boris Dyshlenko takes this black square and playfully stretches it across twenty years of Soviet and Russian history — only to show that, despite all “social processes,” nothing in the life of the protagonist or the country changes at all. In this cycle of short stories, published here in full for the first time, Dyshlenko reveals himself not only as a virtuoso of dry, humorous writing, but also as an heir to Beckett and Kafka.