The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories
(Libby/OverDrive eBook, Kindle)

*Starred Review* This powerful collection of interconnected short stories by the gifted Marra (A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, 2013) spans the gamut of the Russian experience, covering the years 1937 to the present. In the opening story, The Leopard, set in 1930s Leningrad in the catacombs beneath the city, Roman Markin, a censor working for the government, meticulously removes all traces of so-called dissidents from paintings and photographs. In their place, he creates images of his late brother, from boyhood to old age. Roman is driven by guilt for having informed on his brother, seeking to preserve his brother's image and his own grief. Art is one defense against the bleak, oppressive society created under communism; another is the biting black humor of the hopeless. In The Grozny Tourist Bureau, the former deputy director of an art museum has been recruited as tourism director of his bombed-out city. Well aware of the absurdity of his mission, he seeks inspiration in the pamphlets from the tourism bureaus of other urban hellscapes: Baghdad, Pyongyang, Houston. Marra, in between bursts of acidic humor, summons the terror, polluted landscapes, and diminished hopes of generations of Russians in a tragic and haunting collection.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2015 Booklist

Marra follows A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (one of PW's 10 best books of 2013) with this collection of nine interconnected stories, divided into sides A, B, and intermission. They probe personal facets of Russian life, from 1937 to the present-from Chechnya to Siberia and from labor camp to hillside meadow. In the first story, Roman Markin, a Stalin-era specialist in removing purged individuals from photographs and politically correcting artwork, airbrushes out his own brother, then begins secretly inserting his brother's face into other pieces, including a photograph with a ballerina he's erasing and a landscape by 19th-century Chechen painter Zakharov into which he's adding a party boss. "Granddaughters," set in the Siberian mining town of Kirovsk, focuses on Galina, the ballerina's granddaughter. Inheriting her grandmother's beauty if not her talent, Galina captures the Miss Siberia crown, the attentions of the 14th richest man in Russia, and a movie role in Web of Deceit, while her sweetheart, Kolya, ends up fighting and dying in Chechnya. In "The Grozny Tourist Bureau," deputy museum director Ruslan Dukorov rescues the Zakharov landscape from war damage, then paints in his wife and child-killed, like Kolya, in the meadow depicted in the painting. The title story follows Kolya's brother to the meadow. "A Temporary Exhibition" shows Roman's nephew at the 2013 exhibition of Roman's work arranged by Ruslan and his second wife. Marra portrays a society built on betrayal, pollution, lies, and bullying, where art, music, fantasy, even survival, can represent quiet acts of rebellion. As in his acclaimed novel, Marra finds in Chechnya an inspiration his for his uniquely funny, tragic, bizarre, and memorable fiction. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Love and war, loyalty and betrayal, are themes inextricably joined in the literary imagination. Marra, who dazzled readers and critics with his debut novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, once again captivates with this collection of stories spanning 75 years. Linked by generations of political rebels, artists, soldiers, and criminals, these tales pay homage to the victims of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the resulting wars in Chechnya. It's a time when brother turns on brother, children on parents, coworkers on each other. History is rewritten by the victors and trust is a word without meaning. Yet from this darkness Marra creates characters full of love, repentance, and even hope. A man sells a valued painting in order to finance a blind woman's surgery. A husband, facing the imminent death of his wife from cancer, takes his family on holiday to a contaminated lake where people swim with rebellious joy. An artist who turned his brother in to the authorities assuages his guilt by surreptitiously sketching that brother's likeness onto each canvas he censors for the government. Verdict Marra's numerous awards (the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award, the Whiting Award, the Pushcart Prize) were no fluke. With generosity of spirit and a surprising dash of humor, these artfully woven narratives coalesce into a majestic whole. [See Prepub Alert, 4/6/15.]-Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Communists, oligarchs, and toxic landscapes from Siberia to Chechnya define this collection of tightly linked stories from Marra (A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, 2013). In fact, let's go ahead and call it a novel: though the individual stories bounce around in time and are told in different voices, they share a set of characters and have a clear narrative arc. More importantly, they share a command of place and character that strikingly reimagines nearly a century of changes in Russia. In the opener, "The Leopard," a communist censor in 1937 secretly inserts his disappeared brother's face in the photos he retouchesa fact that re-emerges in later stories and also serves as a symbol for how what's lost in Russia never quite disappears. (An oil painting of a bland Chechnyan landscape plays a similar role.) From there, the story moves to chilly Kirovsk, a cancer-ridden industrial town that's struggled to adjust to the fall of Communism, and hometown of Galina, a middling actress who's risen to fame thanks to her marriage with Russia's 13th wealthiest man. In Chechnya, we meet her childhood boyfriend, Kolya, who's been taken prisoner after becoming a soldier. Marra's Russia is marked by both interconnection and darkly comic irony; Kolya's stint in captivity is "the most serene of his adult life," while elsewhere a man is roped into trying to sell mine-ridden Grozny as a tourist destination. ("For inspiration, I studied pamphlets from the tourist bureaus of other urban hellscapes: Baghdad, Pyongyang, Houston.") As in his previous novel, Marra is deft at managing different characters at different points in time, but the book's brilliance and humor are laced with the somber feeling that the country is allergic to evolution: KGB thugs then, drug dealers and Internet scammers now, with a few stray moments of compassion in between. A powerful and melancholy vision of a nation with long memories and relentless turmoil. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

*Starred Review* This powerful collection of interconnected short stories by the gifted Marra (A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, 2013) spans the gamut of the Russian experience, covering the years 1937 to the present. In the opening story, "The Leopard," set in 1930s Leningrad in the catacombs beneath the city, Roman Markin, a censor working for the government, meticulously removes all traces of so-called dissidents from paintings and photographs. In their place, he creates images of his late brother, from boyhood to old age. Roman is driven by guilt for having informed on his brother, seeking to preserve his brother's image and his own grief. Art is one defense against the bleak, oppressive society created under communism; another is the biting black humor of the hopeless. In "The Grozny Tourist Bureau," the former deputy director of an art museum has been recruited as tourism director of his bombed-out city. Well aware of the absurdity of his mission, he seeks inspiration in the pamphlets from the tourism bureaus of other "urban hellscapes: Baghdad, Pyongyang, Houston." Marra, in between bursts of acidic humor, summons the terror, polluted landscapes, and diminished hopes of generations of Russians in a tragic and haunting collection. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

It's great to see Marra back so quickly after his recent New York Times best-selling and multi-award-winning A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. And it's no surprise that the stories here are set variously in the Soviet Union and Russia, with some featuring Chechnya, whose wars were the subject of Constellation. Among his characters: a 1930s Soviet censor pining over photographs he must alter of a disgraced ballerina and women recalling their grandmothers, former gulag prisoners who settled in Siberia.

Love and war, loyalty and betrayal, are themes inextricably joined in the literary imagination. Marra, who dazzled readers and critics with his debut novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, once again captivates with this collection of stories spanning 75 years. Linked by generations of political rebels, artists, soldiers, and criminals, these tales pay homage to the victims of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the resulting wars in Chechnya. It's a time when brother turns on brother, children on parents, coworkers on each other. History is rewritten by the victors and trust is a word without meaning. Yet from this darkness Marra creates characters full of love, repentance, and even hope. A man sells a valued painting in order to finance a blind woman's surgery. A husband, facing the imminent death of his wife from cancer, takes his family on holiday to a contaminated lake where people swim with rebellious joy. An artist who turned his brother in to the authorities assuages his guilt by surreptitiously sketching that brother's likeness onto each canvas he censors for the government. VERDICT Marra's numerous awards (the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award, the Whiting Award, the Pushcart Prize) were no fluke. With generosity of spirit and a surprising dash of humor, these artfully woven narratives coalesce into a majestic whole. [See Prepub Alert, 4/6/15.]—Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

Marra follows A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (one of PW's 10 best books of 2013) with this collection of nine interconnected stories, divided into sides A, B, and intermission. They probe personal facets of Russian life, from 1937 to the present—from Chechnya to Siberia and from labor camp to hillside meadow. In the first story, Roman Markin, a Stalin-era specialist in removing purged individuals from photographs and politically correcting artwork, airbrushes out his own brother, then begins secretly inserting his brother's face into other pieces, including a photograph with a ballerina he's erasing and a landscape by 19th-century Chechen painter Zakharov into which he's adding a party boss. "Granddaughters," set in the Siberian mining town of Kirovsk, focuses on Galina, the ballerina's granddaughter. Inheriting her grandmother's beauty if not her talent, Galina captures the Miss Siberia crown, the attentions of the 14th richest man in Russia, and a movie role in Web of Deceit, while her sweetheart, Kolya, ends up fighting and dying in Chechnya. In "The Grozny Tourist Bureau," deputy museum director Ruslan Dukorov rescues the Zakharov landscape from war damage, then paints in his wife and child—killed, like Kolya, in the meadow depicted in the painting. The title story follows Kolya's brother to the meadow. "A Temporary Exhibition" shows Roman's nephew at the 2013 exhibition of Roman's work arranged by Ruslan and his second wife. Marra portrays a society built on betrayal, pollution, lies, and bullying, where art, music, fantasy, even survival, can represent quiet acts of rebellion. As in his acclaimed novel, Marra finds in Chechnya an inspiration his for his uniquely funny, tragic, bizarre, and memorable fiction. (Oct.)