The latest book from a master of the Moscow literary avant-garde—his first since receiving the Andrei Bely Prize for prose—comprises short stories, a play, and a "romanella" (a genre neologism coined by the author).

It is a cohesive, intellectual dystopia, in which characters and situations collide like bumper cars at an amusement park.
There is a distinctly Ballardian plot about a traffic cop who runs down "superfluous people."
There is a mystical adventure involving a seeker of *maithuna*—a sexual escapade that serves as a conduit to the divine.
There is a psychedelic "meta-cinema": a locomotive—a train wreathed in flames—hurtles forward along a beam of light, traveling from the space beyond the screen into the Zayauzye district of Moscow. And that is only the beginning…
The book culminates in a new *Antigone*, in which the remnants of ancient Greek tragedy, Hindu deities, and the Higgs boson intertwine in a tantric vortex, dismantling the final bastions of normative—and narrative—logic.