Dispatches from the District Committee

Starred review from February 10, 2025
Many of the stories in this explosive and taboo-busting collection from Sorokin (Blue Lard) are set against the backdrop of Soviet-era repression. The tales are populated by corrupt and deranged authority figures who cause rampant disorder and commit lurid violence. In “A Hearing of the Factory Committee,” all hell breaks loose when crackpot officials take a factory worker to task for his alcoholism, while “A Free Period” features a school principal who sexually abuses a fifth grader under the guise of helping him come to terms with his sexual desire. Sorokin achieves a deliberately crude and ecstatic lyricism via repetition of words like “pus” and “lard,” and he’s particularly adept at describing rotting flesh. Underpinning each entry is a sense of deeply sinister forces at work, but what makes the stories soar is Sorokin’s freewheeling prose, translated faithfully by Lawton. “Possibilities,” for instance, begins dreamily (“When day approaches dusk, when the gloomy September sky exudes cold and indifference”) only to end with the phrase “a pissy stink” repeated 15 times. Though not for the faint of heart, Sorokin’s singular vision demands attention.