Lenny Makepeace uses magic and propaganda to lead Russia to a Marxist utopia.

ABRAM TERTZ is the pseudonym of Andrei Sinyavsky, the exile Soviet dissident writer whose works have been compared to fabulists like Kafka and Borges. Tertz's settings are exotic but familiar and as compelling as those of lunatics and mystics.

"Mr. Tertz's witty comments on Soviet society . . . are embedded in a whimsical context, created out of narrative, fable, and cryptic Joycean associations and telescoping characters, that leave the reader exhilarated and bemused. . . . Abram Tertz . . . has a splendidly baroque imagination and a gift for high and low comedy, whatever the import one chooses to read into it." —Martin Levin, New York Times Book Review