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Blue Lard

Blue Lard
Cover of the 2024 English edition by NYRB
AuthorVladimir Sorokin
Original titleГолубое сало
TranslatorMax Lawton
LanguageRussian
GenreNovel, Postmodern fiction, Dystopian fiction
PublisherAd Marginem (Russian), NYRB (English)
Publication date1999
Publication placeRussia
Published in English
2024

Blue Lard (Russian: Голубое сало, romanized: Goluboye salo) is a postmodern novel by Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin. It was first published in 1999 by Ad Marginem.

Plot

The plot of the book revolves around a substance called "blue lard" that the clones of Russian writers produce when they write[1] which is then used to power a hidden reactor on the moon.[2] Some of the cloned Russian writers include Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Akhmatova, Chekhov and Nabokov.[2] The novel takes place in two timelines: the second half of the 21st century (set in Siberia and Moscow in the future) and an alternative timeline of 1954 (in Joseph Stalin's Moscow and Adolf Hitler's Third Reich).

Reception

In June 2002, a Russian youth activist group, Walking Together, threw portions of copies of the book into a toilet installed outside the Bolshoi Theatre, in protest of Sorokin's collaboration with the Theatre. The group accused Sorokin of writing pornography, due to the novel's inclusion of a gay sex scene between Khrushchev and Stalin. The toilet was blown up in September 2002 by a group calling itself "The Red Partisans".[3]

The novel received positive reviews from the New York Times and Publishers Weekly.[1][2] A review from the Financial Times stated that the book helped "cement Sorokin’s place among the greats."[4]

Larissa Volokhonsky stated that it was the only book she ever asked to have removed from her house.[5]

References

  1. ^ a b Illingworth, Dustin (25 February 2024). "This Book Is Baffling, Debauched and Perfectly Human". New York Times. Retrieved 8 March 2024. It begins in Russia, in 2068, when scientists have set about cloning the country's great past writers in a clandestine Siberian lab. The novels, stories and poems these clones produce are of little importance; the scientists' true quarry is the blue lard that forms on the clones' bodies as they perform the "script process."
  2. ^ a b c "Blue Lard". Publishers Weekly. 12 December 2023. Retrieved 8 March 2024. Their crazed output turns out to be a mere by-product of the scientists' true purpose: to produce the "blue lard" used to power a hidden reactor on the moon.
  3. ^ ""Идущие вместе" подорвались на своем унитазе". Kommersant (in Russian). 12 September 2002. Retrieved 30 June 2024.
  4. ^ Weaver, Courtney (15 March 2024). "Vladimir Sorokin's Blue Lard and Red Pyramid — surreal Russian satire that still shocks". Financial Times. Retrieved 30 June 2024.
  5. ^ Remnick, David (30 October 2005). "The Translation Wars". The New Yorker. Retrieved 30 June 2024.

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