The rat catcher

the long version

GENERAL & LITERARY FICTION. Svetloyar is bidding to be included in the list of historical towns making up Russia's famous Golden RingA" around Moscow, a lucrative tourist route. However, aside from the problem that it has no history - having been entirely constructed during the Stalinist period - the place is teeming with rats, so two pest-controllers are summoned from Moscow. What follows is an astute interrogation of the nature of both humanity and history, as the narrator's philandering impulses are set alongside his perpetual concern for the destruction of rats. While clearly a novel of the classical Russian tradition, The Rat Catcher also incorporates the more experimental and satirical aesthetic of Soviet literature, and as the narrator's perception of reality becomes increasingly warped, so does our experience of the almost comically grotesque landscape around him.