Requiem for a Soldier

Set in the vast Kazakh steppes of the crumbling Soviet Empire, Oleg Pavlov's kaleidoscope tale is peopled with soldiers and prisoners, hoboes and refugees and mice that steal medicines. Poetic, tragic and darkly comic, the novel is at once a grotesque portrayal of late Soviet reality and an apocalyptic allegory in the vein of Faulkner and Kafka.