THE LOSS: A Novella and Two Stories
By
More fiction from the prizewinning Russian author of Escape Hatch and Baize-Colored Table with Decanter. The title novella, about its obsessive protagonist whose efforts to dig a tunnel beneath the Ural River earn him eventual canonization, wheezes with conventional and predictable ironies--as does ""Klycharov and Alimushkin,"" a fable-like tale of its title characters' crisscrossing and conflicting destinies. Far better is ""The Prisoner from the Caucasus,"" a spare and direct story (made into an acclaimed recent film) detailing the relationship between a Russian soldier and his Chechen captive. It's the least tricky and mannered, as well as most affecting, example of Makanin's seemingly overpraised work to have reached English translation thus far.