Moskoviáda

The author Juri Andrukhovych is one of the most important contemporary Ukrainian writers. His novel Moskoviáda (1993) describes the dissolution of the Soviet empire in the form of an absurd spectacle: On a gloomy autumn morning in Moscow in 1991, Otto von F., a literature student from western Ukraine, wakes up in the dormitory of the Gorki Institute. He is still hungover, but already in search of the next sip of alcohol. And so begins a fantastic journey through the capital of a crumbling empire. On his breathless journey through the Soviet metropolis, he meets numerous people and characters - and finally ends up in the Moscow department stores' "Dytiachyi Svit" (Central Children's Store). There he falls under the control of secret service agents who are breeding a gigantic army of rats in the catacombs beneath the Kremlin ...
In Moskoviáda, Andrukhovych deals with the collapse of the Soviet Union with biting derision - and touches on topics of unbroken topicality: neo-authoritarian Russia, the rise of nationalism and the glorification of the communist era.