Han Ong

It's full of those kinds of storytellers' way of going in and out of the tale.

My take on it is that it is Ulitskaya herself, that this is her style.

She just launches into the story, and every so often she might be aware of herself telling the story, and maybe that is responsible for these locutions and phrasings.

My take on it is that Ulitskaya's methodology as a storyteller is that she wants to sweep all of life in her storytelling wake.

So it's just as legitimate and feasible to start in the KGB captain's viewpoint and to incorporate his two stooges along with him.

as it would have been to start with the hero of the story, with Boris Ivanovich.

So I just think, you know, it's that kind of sweep that takes in Captain Popov at the start, Nikolai Mikhailovich.

his cousin Anastasia, the old women each in their turn.

And then when Nikolai Mikhailovich's family visits from Moscow, each has their cameo.

Everybody is part of the cast.

It is a story of flight then.

So, you know, it's a story of flight.

But for...

Such an emergency scenario.

It's amazing how entertaining and light it is, as if Boris Ivanovich was going on another adventure.

I think it speaks to both the survival instinct, the survival optimism aspect.

of the character as it does to Ulitskaya's own sense of optimism in the midst of gloom.

So it does become a different story in that it concentrates its energies and its telling on

one person and uses that person as a kind of symbol of the oppression of the Russian state.

But it continues the comic energy established by the beginning, because you could also say that Boris Ivanovich