Tatyana Tolstaya (1951– ) is a Russian writer and essayist born in Leningrad to a family of writers, including Leo and Alexei Tolstoy. Alexei’s wife, Natalia Krandievskaya, was an important poet, and Tatyana’s maternal grandfather, Mikhail Lozinsky, was a literary translator. Tatyana received a degree in classics at Leningrad State University and went to work for a Moscow publishing house shortly after that. Her first short story, “On a Golden Porch,” was published in Avrora magazine in 1983, which launched her literary career. Her first story collection established her as one of the foremost writers of the Gorbachev era.
Tolstaya spent much of the 1980s and 1990s living in the United States, teaching at various universities. Her work has been well received in the US, and the critically acclaimed Austin indie rock band Okkervil River took their name from one of her short stories. Her writing is varied, ranging from nonfiction to the dystopian science fiction novel excerpted here, The Slynx (2000 in Russia; New York Review of Books Classics English-language edition 2007). Known for her acerbic essays on contemporary Russian life, Tolstaya has also been the cohost of the Russian cultural interview television program School for Scandal.
The Slynx is a riotous joy of a novel, spinning a tale of a postapocalyptic future Russia that is rife with satirical jabs at local absurdities of geopolitics and elements of folklore. Its deft storytelling and rampant imagination set it apart from many postapocalyptic novels and place it firmly in the tradition of Russian literature established by Gogol, Bulgakov, and Bely. In some sense, too, The Slynx seems a natural successor to the dystopic situation set out in Yefim Zozulya’s “The Doom of Principal City” (1918), also reprinted in this volume.
In The Slynx, civilization ended two hundred years ago in an event known as the Blast. The character Benedikt makes the best of a bad situation as he survives by transcribing old books and presenting them as the words of the great new leader Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe. By the terms of Tolstaya’s chaotic future, Benedikt is even thriving—for example, he is mutation-free, with no extra fingers, gills, or cockscombs sprouting from his eyelids like some people. Nor is he a half-human Degenerator, harnessed to a troika. Part weird, original post-Collapse novel and part a testimony to the power of words, The Slynx follows Benedikt on a quest to maintain and preserve the culture of Russia against dangers both internal and external. The first chapter, included here, exemplifies the manic energy and originality of the novel while also being a more or less self-contained story.