Peltse and Pentameron: And, Pentameron (Writings from An Unbound Europe)

Rating:
Summary: A gem of a snapshot from Soviet-era Ukraine
Review: The "Unbound Europe" series gives us another unexpected source of enjoyment (check out Selimovic's "Death and the Dervish" for a book that could change your life). Dibrova writes a 50-page long short-story, "Peltse" about an otherwise miserable and undistinguished kid who fantasizes about his glorious future. Or is it fantasy?

"Pentameron" is a quick-moving day in the life of five administrative functionaries, and in just 150 pages Dibrova manages to lay bare for us the fears, paranoias, concerns, hopes and (few though they may be) joys in the lives of these people. Having visited Ukraine in the mid-1980s I was especially pleased to catch in these pages what I consider to have been a glimpse inside all those monolithic government buildings I passed by in Kiev.

A short and sweet read that will confirm - and illuminate - many of the suspicions (dare I say stereotypes) that westerners held about the Soviet bloc in the 1970s and '80s.