Man and His Surroundings

Man and His Surroundings irreverently explores Soviet and post-Soviet identity, politics, and history.

In what Iskander himself calls the book’s seminal novella, the narrator meets a man who believes himself to be Lenin, thawed out after decades of cryogenic storage.

The narrator endures a phantasmagorical account of what “Lenin” thought and did during the October Revolution of 1917 and how another revolution is imminent.

In another novella, the narrator tells of a nationally renowned fencer as the fencer sits at a neighboring table, discussing the impossibility of equality on earth, while his son pesters him for ice cream.

The novellas enrapture the reader with their humor and impart a better intuitive understanding of the Soviet cultural heritage and mindset.