Beyond Tula

“The best way to think of [Beyond Tula] is as a kind of layer cake, a
book that tries to be an Ancient Greek romance, a Soviet-era production novel,
a summer idyll, a parody of various 19th-century Russian tropes and ideas, a
sour analysis of human nature, and a homoerotic buddy story, all at the same
time. It skips from satire to parody to music-hall comedy (the characters
are constantly singing snatches of popular romances) in a way that is dizzying
to read and must have been a riot to translate. (Ainsley Morse’s translation is
impeccable: enjoyable, coherent, inventive, and at times very funny.) … Beyond
Tula is a fine addition to the subgenre of Lucianian satires about nothing
much, about mooching and musing, alongside Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist
or Flaubert’s Bouvard et Pécuchet. We are lucky to have it in a
forthright and laugh-out-loud funny English translation that pops and bubbles.”
—James Womack, Los Angeles Review of Books

~James Womack