Ice

"Considered [Sorokin's] fineset work to date." --"Booklist" "The controversial postmodernist Vladimir Sorokin has struck through the language barrier again in a crystalline English translation by Jamey Gambrell of his unnerving novel..."Ice," one of 11 novels he has written, and the first installment in a projected trilogy to be published by New York Review Books, is a marvelous introduction to his work." --"The St. Petersburg Times" [Russia] "George A. Romero meets Nikolai Gogol." --"Entertainment Weekly" "["Ice"] provides a head-scratching pleasure and deceptive quickness similar to that found in the novels of Haruki Murakami...[It] is a thriller in the truest sense: In addition to a swift and sure plot, reading it affords the thrill of discovering something new." --"Los Angeles Times" A "trippy satire from one of Russia's most talented writers"--"Bloomberg News" "After reading Russian author Vladimir Sorokin's recently translated "Ice "(out now), we realized that we'd encountered one of those rare books that rearrange your brain. Sorokin - who was once threatened with jail for writing a sex scene between Khrushchev and Stalin - has written a story about an asteroid buried in Siberia that communicates with its alien but humanoid "children." Convinced of their superiority, the aliens regard humans as "meat machines" and dispatch them remorselessly. Yet Sorokin makes us feel a disturbing sympathy for the murderous aliens. In the process, he explores the dark secret of lockstep, exclusivist zealotry: Once you've joined the in-crowd, you zealotry: Once you've joined the in-crowd, you really do feel like a member of a superior species.Those who aren't with you are worse than inferior - they're disposable. Of course, you could ignore the ah-ha insight and read "Ice "for its surprising plot twists and insider's view of secret cults - that is, the kind of thriller elements that are irresistible to U.S. meat machines." -Very Short Lis