Golden hands melted down, a heart given to a girl pulsates in a glass jar, a lonely accordion staggers down the street. Vladimir Sorokin's first novel was a playful dance on the bones of socialist realism: the writer reified previous metaphors and added a new one—the norm. From a normal perspective, only a criminal or a madman could refuse this pass to the world of respectable citizens—a symbol of mutual responsibility and complicity in abomination.

'Norma' was written at the height of stagnation and published after the collapse of the USSR. Today, amid attempts to revive the Soviet myth, the novel has acquired a new resonance—as have eternal questions about the relationship between the artist and the crowd, and morality.

Authors: Vladimir Sorokin