In what remains of Moscow some two hundred years after the ?Blast,? a community persists in primitive, ridiculous, and often brutal circumstances. Mice are the current source of food, clothes, and commerce, as well as a source of humor for Tatyana Tolstaya. Owning books in this society is prohibited by the tyrant, who plagiarizes the old masters, becoming his people?s sole writer. One of the tyrant?s scribes, Benedikt, is the main narrator of The Slynx. He is in love with books as objects but is unable to derive any meaning or moral benefit from them. Like the imagined, feared animal of this rollicking satirical novel?s title, Benedikt represents lust, cruelty, egotism, and ignorance. The Slynx and Benedikt are one.

"More than just a primitive people's boogeyman, the Slynx is the symbolic incarnation of the collective anguish of the citizens living in a despotic regime....a wildly inventive, extremely well-executed and powerful tale." Jean Charbonneau, The Denver Post

"The blazing vitality of [her] imagination, the high-spirited playfulness...place her in that uniquely Russian line of satirists and surrealists." Pearl K. Bell , New York Times Book Review,

"[T]he most promising of all the ?post-Soviet? writers...She sounds like no one else." David Remnick

"As tragic as it is funny, as upsetting as it is hopeful, The Slynx is a brilliant and fearless portrait of Russia, a nation cursed by its rulers and blessed by its literature. Count Tatyana Tolstaya as one of those blessings." Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook

"The Slynx contains almost everything: it is at once brutal and generous, specific and universal, dark and hilarious, classical and absolutely new." Jonathan Safran Foer

"[A] brilliantly poetic, impressionistic assault on its fondest pastoral pieties....It's serious fun." Ben Dickinson, Elle

"It is impossible to communicate adequately the richness, the exuberance, and the horrid inventiveness of this book. It must have been a nightmare to translate, and Jamey Gambrell has done a heroic job." John Banville, The New Republic

"A strikingly imagined first novel...A densely woven, thought-provoking fantasy."Kirkus Reviews

"In this extended fable, [Tolstaya] captures the Russian yearning for culture, even is desperate circumstances." Publishers Weekly

"With the publication...of The Slynx, [Tolstaya] will...be granted a place alongside her exalted countrymen Nabokov, Bulgakov, and Gogol." Bookforum

"Spellbinding futuristic novel." The New Yorker

'In what remains of Moscow some two hundred years after the "Blast," a community persists in primitive, ridiculous, and often brutal circumstances. Mice are the current source of food, clothes, and commerce, as well as a source of humor for Tatyana Tolstaya. Owning books in this society is prohibited by the tyrant, who plagiarizes the old masters, becoming his people's sole writer. One of the tyrant's scribes, Benedikt, is the main narrator of The Slynx. He is in love with books as objects but is unable to derive any meaning or moral benefit from them. Like the imagined, feared animal of this rollicking satirical novel's title, Benedikt represents lust, cruelty, egotism, and ignorance. The Slynx and Benedikt are one.As Pearl K. Bell wrote of Tolstaya's stories on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, "The blazing vitality of [her] imagination, the high-spirited playfulness . . . place her in that uniquely Russian line of satirists and surrealists." David Remnick has called her "the most promising of all the 'post-Soviet' writers . . . She sounds like no one else."'

In what remains of Moscow some 200 years after the "Blast, " a community persists in primitive circumstances. Owning books is prohibited by the tyrant, Benedikt, who is the main narrator of "The Slynx." Like the imagined, feared animal of this rollicking satirical novel's title, Benedikt represents lust, cruelty, egotism, and ignorance.