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Bezig met laden... Let's Put the Future Behind Us (Womack, Jack) (editie 1997)door Jack Womack
Informatie over het werkLet's Put the Future Behind Us door Jack Womack
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 Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek.  Gwendydd | Jul 12, 2020 |  geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
WE CAN PROVE KENNEDY SHOT HIMSELF – AS LONG AS WE’RE PAID IN ADVANCE In the unfettered freedom of Russia’s new found venture capital frenzy, Max Borodin can organise anything – so long as the readies are ready. That’s why he’s Moscow’s most successful businessman. But Max’s life has its downside: his wife, Tanya, nags him, his mistress, Sonya, exhausts him; his brother Evgeny needs him – to help extricate him from yet another shady business fiasco. Then there are always the country’s friendly mafia, keen to lend a helping hand with the profits of Max’s Universal Manufacturing Company – producer of documents, historical and otherwise, to suit every conceivable occasion. Satire rarely comes more sulphuric than this. 'Let’s Put the Future Behind Us' is the wittiest job of fictional surgery on New Russia since it iron curtain was amputated. Extraordinary … fierce and fiery prose … If it’s material for a novel you’re looking for, Russia is where it’s atSUNDAY TELEGRAPH Womack’s neon prose is enough to light up a world gone dark and madTHE TIMES I don’t expect to read a funnier, more profound book this year, and you shouldn’t eitherTIME OUT Bitter, vitriolically funny satire … a chilling peal of laughter in the darkGLASGOW HERALD Womack, simply the coolest writer of his generationNORTHERN ECHO Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (4.18)
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Max is a wealthy businessman. He runs a document forgery business - an essential service in Russia's bureaucratic system. He is happily married, although the relationship with his wife is tense. He also has a young mistress, who is married to another businessman. His mistress's husband hires him for a huge forgery project to cover up his past involvement in a scandal (his company took government money to build a railroad, pocketed the money, never built the railroad, and pretended it had been built) so that he can impress potential partners in a new business venture. Max finds himself drawn into this new business venture against his wishes, and has to risk his life dealing with gangsters.
The author is not Russian, and in some ways this is very obvious (for instance, he sticks to the same nickname for each character throughout the whole book, which makes it so much easier for non-Russians to read), but it also seems to perfectly capture Russian black humor and twisted relationship with reality.
This is an engaging thriller. It can be gory (you can't really write about Russian gangsters without a torture scene or too). The humor is rarely in the form of outright jokes (except for the scenes where Max's brother is planning a theme park called Sovietland that will allow American tourists to enjoy the full Soviet experience, including secret police interrogations and the gulag), but instead relies on the normalization of utterly ridiculous situations (going to a sauna, getting drunk on vodka because there's no socially acceptable way to not drink as much as the naked gangster next to you, then just casually walking away after someone comes in and shoots everyone in the sauna). Everything in the book is totally over-the-top without ever feeling totally implausible. (