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The Slynx.
Tolstaya, Tatyana (author).
Jan. 2003. 288p. Houghton, hardcover, $24 (0-618-12497-7).
REVIEW.
First published December 15, 2002 (Booklist).
Tolstaya, great-grandniece of Leo Tolstoy, presents Moscow 200 years into the future, after “the blast.” What remains after nuclear devastation is a community of mutants. Those born afterward are often subject to “consequences”--a tail, claws, an extra eye. Mice are the mainstay of survival, and the people live out government-controlled lives, working in a workhouse, eating in an eating house, all controlled by an autocrat who presents works of literature as his own. Books from before the blast are forbidden, and Benedikt is one of the scribes who copies the prose and poetry put forth by the dictator as his own. As Benedikt slowly unravels the secret of books, his own love for art takes over. However, he isn’t able to shake his own murderous lust for knowledge, and in his pursuit of the government’s horde of literature, he eventually becomes what he most fears--he is the embodiment of the slynx, a mystical beast who pounces at any opportunity. Tolstaya’s voice is imaginative and satirical, with a blend of sf post-apocalypticism thrown in. — Michael Spinella
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