The Feast

"The Picnic" is a collection consisting of thirteen stories by Vladimir Sorokin, written in 2000 and first published in 2001. The main theme of the book is food in all its forms: from the spiritual, through the physical, to its final form as excrement. The collection features “twisted” styles of Russian and foreign literature. In the stories “Concretne” and “Yu” futuristic vocabulary from the Chinese language is used. In the works “Nastia,” “Eat!” and “Sugar Sunday” the stylistics of Russian classics are parodied; “Avarona” parodies the Soviet style; and “Banquet” parodies Asian styles. Sorokin also pushes into absurdity the realities of post-Soviet Russia transported into the future in the novellas “Ash” and “Horse Soup.” “Food as passion,” “Food, as well as love, gives us fullness of being”—this is how V. Sorokin himself defines the key ideas of his book. In “The Picnic,” literally everything becomes food and its consumers: plants, animals, fish, birds, people, objects, words, letters, slogans, products of genetic engineering in a future society, speeches, events, feelings—and even… emptiness…