Beyond Tula

Andrei Egunov-Nikolev's Beyond Tula is an uproarious romp through the earnestly boring and unintentionally campy world of early Soviet "e;production"e; prose, with its celebration of robust workers heroically building socialism. Combining burlesque absurdism and lofty references to classical and Russian High Modernist literature with a rather tongue-in-cheek plot about the struggles of an industrializing rural proletariat, this "e;Soviet pastoral"e; actually appeared in the official press in 1931 (though it was quickly removed from circulation). As a renegade classics scholar, Egunov was aware of the expressive potential latent in so-called "e;light genres"e;-Beyond Tula is a modernist pastoral jaunt that leaves the reader with plenty to ponder.