Difficult Literature: Max Lawton with Christian Lorentzen

Presenting a wide variety of genres and tones, The Sugar Kremlin lays out a frightening vision of speculative mercilessness and carnivalesque political horror.

The Sugar Kremlin is the follow-up to Vladimir Sorokin's Day of the Oprichnik, taking place in the same New Medieval universe over the course of fifteen chapters that all return to the object of the title: replicas of the Moscow Kremlin made of sugar. Thousands of these creations are given away to children during the holidays, then make their way through each stratum of Russian society. We follow the trajectories of these candied gifts from the hands of harried paupers to secret political dissidents, from torture-obsessed civil servants to sex workers in a nearby bordello...

As Sorokin shifts from story to story and style to style, he draws the reader through grotesquely Russian scenes, creating an aberrantly metaphysical encyclopedia of the New Medieval "Russian soul." The candy's sweetness is deceptive--underneath it, you may detect notes of blood.