Tolstaya’s fantasia opens some two centuries hence, after an event spoken of as as the Blast (some sort of nuclear accident). It would be three years later when the late Jamey Gambrell would transmute into English the awkward colloquial Russianess of Tostaya’s prose as a New York Review book. Dmitry Bykov was one of the naysayers, comparing the novel to a poor man's The Snail on the Slope ( referencing a novel by the Sturgatsky brothers).

THE SLYNX (KYS)is both a literary novel and a bestseller in Russia. It became the book to be seen with in the Russia of 2002. Begun in 1986 and toiled over for 14 years whilst in Russia, Europe, Britain and America, this novel came to claim the Triumph prize in 2001 (a prize which had been set up a decade earlier to recognise outstanding contributions to Russian culture). The Slynx ( Kys) constituted something of a departure for her. Tatiana Nikitichna Tolstaya, Leo Tolstoy’s grandaughter, had become known for her short stories commenting on the perestrioka period. Sandwiched between these two portents however, came Russia’s true post-apocalyptic classic. Then it would be 15 years later when Dmitry Glukhovsky launched the Metro cycle – his account of the survivors of a nuclear war who have decamped to the Moscow subway – which has become a global pop culture phenomenon. Published in Novy Mir, this short story explores the life of a family in an unspecified post-disaster scenario. This impasse came to be challenged in 1987 as the Soviet edifice began to wobble, when Ludmilla Petrushevskaya penned The New Robinson Crusoe: A Chronicle of the End of the Twentieth Century. Where has there been a Russian or Soviet novel that can stand alongside Walter Miller Junior’s A Canticle for Leibowitz from the America of 1959?

The post-apocalyptic story – this sister subgenre, however – far less so. Russia has had much to say in the way of anti-utopias, having more or less written the rulebook on them. Tolsstaya’s sole novel is a science-fantasy farce about the destruction of Russia – and it has divided opinion since publication.

The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya