Also, she capitalizes on her insider’s knowledge of the national psyche, concerning herself with the accumulated rot of a particular social and political order-that of Russia’s Communist era. One might look to Catch-22 for a satirical approximation, although The Slynx is a different breed: Tolstaya is Russian, which means that she employs some traditional elements of storytelling. In other respects, and with its dark humour in particular, The Slynx veers away from the Atwood mode, approaching the paradoxical ambience of Joseph Heller instead. Importantly, Tolstaya demonstrates how the meanings of words atrophy given certain cultural conditions-when what prevails is widespread ignorance and complete intellectual impoverishment. Tolstaya’s novel takes us two hundred years into a post-apocalyptic future, and constructs a dystopia of communal life in a village standing on the ashes of what used to be part of Moscow. Tatyana Tolstaya’s The Slynx is in some ways similar to Margaret Atwood’s Onyx and Crake.
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