Voices of Russian Literature presents in-depth interviews with ten of the most interesting figures writing in Russian today. These figures range from established authors such as Andrei Bitov and Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, who began their careers in the post-Stalinist thaw of the 1950s, to newcomers like Viktor Pelevin, hailed as one of the most original writers of the present era. This collection offers an insider's account of the fate of Russian literature over the past four decades.

Vladimir Sorokin's first published novel, The Queue, is a sly comedy about the late Soviet "years of stagnation." Thousands of citizens are in line for . . . nobody knows quite what, but the rumors are flying. Leather or suede? Jackets, jeans? Turkish, Swedish, maybe even American? It doesn't matter-if anything is on sale, you better line up to buy it. Sorokin's tour de force of ventriloquism and formal daring tells the whole story in snatches of unattributed dialogue, adding up to nothing less than the real voice of the people, overheard on the street as they joke and curse, fall in...