The Bickford fuse

The Great Patriotic War is drawing to a close, but a darkness has fallen over Soviet Russia. And for a disparate, disconnected clutch of wanderers - many thousands of miles apart, linked only by a common goal - four parallel journeys are just beginning. Goritch and his driver, rolling through water, sand and snow on an empty petrol tank; the Occupant of a black airship, looking down benevolently as he floats above his Fatherland; young Andrey, who leaves his religious community in search of a new life; and Kharitonov, who trudges from the Sea of Japan to Leningrad, carrying a fuse that, when lit, could blow all and sundry to smithereens. Taking its name from William Bickford, the English inventor who developed the safety fuse and paved the way for dynamite, The Bickford Fuse explores the origins and dead-ends of the Soviet mentality from the end of World War II to the time of the nation's collapse.

Blending metaphor and fable with real events from Russian history, it evokes - with Kurkov's customary brio - the absurdity and tragedy of those turbulent years.