Surreal happenings in and around Kiev, Ukraine, from the just about plausible if rather odd (Irina's breast milk and its use) to the really extremely unlikely (Semyon's somnambulistic joining of a new democratic movement that meets only at night and aims to take over Parliament) through to the out and out fantastic (the chemical formula causing all who ingest it to be imbued with an
extremely sharp sense of justice on which they act, include the grey cat
Scruffy who becomes a kind of feline vigilante of the night, which is even capable of at least temporarily reanimating the recently dead), with a cast of characters whose motivations are unclear to say the least, although all of the main ones end up turning out to act honourably and get happy endings when it comes to it. A pretty interesting novel and difficult enough to predict (impossible actually) that I finished it quickly. I picked it up in a bookstore a while back because the blurb made it sound a bit like The Master and Margarita, but actually it comes across a bit more like some kind of post-Soviet and multi-perspectived Murakami styled piece (down to the regular recitations of what is eaten and drunk - in this case frequent bowls of dumplings called 'pelmeni', loaves of brown bread and various salted and pickled vegetables and food-stuffs, often as accompaniment to vodka).
