Dead Americans in a Moscow Morgue

The Soviet Union. The height of a biological war, which according to the government’s official version was launched by the United States. Whether that’s true or not, an unknown virus—by galvanizing the nervous systems of the dead—awakens crowds of starved corpses.

An outspoken, full-bodied, merciless (but not pointless) parody. Newman, faithful to his habit of mixing everything possible and turning the incompatible into something unusual, serves us this time a purely literary “Molotov cocktail,” combining in one work two of the Americans’ most “terrifying fears”—zombies and the Sovietski Sojuz. Of course, all stereotypes of both are on full display. As for the author—mocking, smirking, and constantly balancing on the edge of kitsch—he turns what’s happening into a real sideshow: Lenin, vodka, Moskva, Rasputin, and even the original title is stylized with a Russian accent as “Amerikanski Dead…” Naturally, it’s primarily aimed at Americans, not because they’re such ignoramuses, but because it offers the chance to nostalgically remember how naive we were.