What the French Are Silent About

“What the French Keep Silent About…” is Vladimir Kornev’s first book (born 1968), an author whose true literary fame can already be predicted. On the ruins of postmodernism, a bright work has appeared—written with taste and devoid of any “public significance.” Without limiting himself to a simple demonstration of flowers growing out of dirt, the author, together with his hero, goes back to the root causes of this phenomenon and, along the way, unravels a tangle of intricate and hard-to-explain coincidences. In the novel, serious and elevated passages alternate with grotesque scenes from everyday life among different strata of contemporary St. Petersburg society.