A Year in Reading: Stephen Dodson

In my decade-long project to read through Russian literature chronologically (with frequent divagations—I’m motivated but not monomaniacal), this year I reached 1976 and three famous novels generally considered the best their authors ever wrote. Spoiler: I loved them all. The first was ’s ; last year in this venue I wrote about three of his earlier “Moscow novels,” with their gripping stories of moral choices, and this is even better. Anyone who read ’s will be familiar with the main location of the book and the kinds of people who lived there, and anyone who hasn’t read it should read my plug and remedy the omission posthaste. Trifonov binds the Stalinist past to the smugly self-seeking present remorselessly.