A collection of Sorokin's stories from his USSR underground days to the present. Rather Uneven at times, the earlier stories being much, much worse that his later stuff but funny enough that reading eight or so pages of a party functionary shitting and pissing all over some poor fucker's proposal is enjoyable enough. Sorokin's strengths appear later though after the fall of the Soviet Union and when the rise of the oligarchs was unfettered. One of the better stories in the collection, Horse Soup, directly deals with this. Sorokin's ability to juggle the grotesque, humor, and also some truly heartrending tenderness. Its easy to write off some of these stories as obscene, and in a sense they are, but at the same time there is an almost sublime religious sensibility to some of these stories, Tiny Tim in particular.