

This first novel by Robert S. Stickley is prepared for reading, but not for being summarized. It is long, a maximalist satirical book about southern (US) gratitude for man's ability to delude, and particularly, a product of the cold war, a Russian madman whose delights have little to no effect on Vietnam or the arms race, but are redolent of both, utterly subversive and very, very funny.
Don't strap yourself in for this ride, for it is a bit like a carnival donkey ride spiralling slowly, unnoticeably out of the world you thought you were in. The writing is National Book Award caliber, the words are in some of your dictionaries, and you might as well look them up as this is not a book to breeze through. It is long, dense, circuitous, and in no hurry to pay off--which of course deepenss the payoffs. This is an amazing work of fiction.