August

In between two bouts of the plague, I inhaled Vladimir Sorokin’s “Day of the Oprichnik” (2006) and then – during the heat wave – “The Ice trilogy” (2002-6). No wonder he’s in exile. Science fiction that is not fiction about how people can make themselves into monsters. Post-Soviet Kurt Vonnegut?

Image: Nicholas Poussin, Summer: Ruth and Boaz (1664)