The Bickford Fuse
As the Great Patriotic War comes to an uneasy close in 1945, a bizarre assortment of people begin epic journeys across the Soviet Union. Naval seaman Kharitonov, dragging behind him a length of Bickford fuse wire and haunted by dreams of its inventor, treks from the Sea of Japan to Leningrad. Kharitonov wants to write a book about airships. A mysterious black airship, occupied by a single individual and a box of cigarettes, haunts his journey. Gorych and his driver roll through endless night in charge of a searchlight; their truck has no petrol and there is no electricity for the light, yet they manage to switch it on anyway, with momentous consequences for Andrey, who abandons his home, father and brothers because of it. There is no apparent sense or purpose to these adventures, which are the product of Kurkov’s unique, and uniquely Russian, brand of deadpan satire.
Written in the late 1980s (although not published until 2009), as the Soviet Union was falling apart, this novel, accompanied here by a forward from the author, is about the futility of trying to escape one’s history; you can leave home but you can never leave yourself. Although it satirises Soviet Russia, it has much to say about Putin’s Russia too. Dralyuk’s translation is excellent and loses none of Kurkov’s bleak humour, but I was irritated by the use of endnotes, most of which seemed to me unnecessary and had the effect of repeatedly pulling me out of the fictional world. If you decide to read the book, I would recommend ignoring them. Bizarre and hilarious, a masterpiece of circular logic and profound political cynicism.
