In the work of Arkady and Georgy Vayner, the novel “The Loop and the Stone in Green Grass” occupies a special place. It was created in 1974–1975, in the darkest years of stagnation (for the first time it was possible to publish it only in 1990). The Vainers took a risk by combining in the book two of the most forbidden topics: crimes by the “organs” that went unpunished, and the “Jewish question.”
Beautiful Sulamith leads the ordinary life of a Soviet office worker; she studies the work of the Jewish poet Bialik. Her beloved Alyosha is a mid-level writer, the son of a once-important official from the all-powerful KGB. Both have their own secrets and sorrows. The destinies of their families intertwine in the most surprising way. The novel contains both a tragic love story and an exciting investigation with chases and discoveries. All these events unfold against a backdrop of gray everyday life and boundless lies. Ugly reality—though in a relatively “vegetarian” time—kills any living life, everyone who in one way or another doesn’t fit into the bleak Soviet standards and wants the impermissible: freedom…