Vasily Aksyonov. Caesarean Light. A Novel

In Vasily Aksyonov's new, first-published novel, "Caesarean Glow," the action—sometimes quite realistic, sometimes utterly fantastical—quickly shifts from present-day Russia to America, to the author's fictional Kukushkin Islands, to Europe, and back to Russia and America. The main characters are the "new Russian" Slava Gorelik, his lover Natasha, and the elderly writer Stas Vaksino, in whom the author is easily recognizable.