German Sadulaev’s sprawling, unruly novel, set mainly in St Petersburg, is a blistering satire on Russia’s political corruption, economic instability and moral bankruptcy. Maximus, a mid-level manager at Cold Plus, a frozen food import company, is just one cog in the giant wheel of post-Soviet capitalism. When a mysterious box of pink pills turns up in a Dutch shipment of frozen French fries, Maximus decides to sample them and so begins a hallucinogenic journey that propels him into an uncertain future.
Maximus dreams of a distant past where his ancestor, Saat, a horse-herder, becomes the Great Khagan of ancient Khazaria. This is a land where people sleepwalk miles across the steppe to vote in the elections. Their minds are “divided into different chambers, each swarming with its own political party” wittily referred to as “peehives”. Later, Maximus learns that the Khazaris developed a toxic fish paste which was imported to central Europe and became a forerunner to the pink pills.
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