Cheerful Life, or Sex in the USSR

In his new novel with the provocative title "A Cheerful Life, or Sex in the USSR," Yuri Polyakov transports us to the year 1983. The author masterfully recreates a long-gone world with a sly nostalgia. As always, the reader is in for a virtuoso plot that intertwines big politics, nomenclature games, intrigues of the creative environment, and risky love adventures. The "Chronicle of Those Years" is written vividly, wittily, and the language is characterized by imagery and aphorism. One critic aptly referred to Polyakov's new novel as the "Decameron of the Stagnation Era".