THE QUEUE

First English translation, first printing. Publisher's original yellow cloth, in the Jan Brychta illustrated dustwrapper. A very good copy, the binding square and firm, the contents with light spotting to the early and last pages and toning to the paper stock are otherwise clean throughout and without inscriptions or stamps. The top edge of the closed text block is spotted. Complete with the original dustwrapper that is faded to the top edge of the front panel and spine, and is otherwise without loss or tears.

The author's third book and his first full length work in English. Originally published in France by Syntaxis in 1985 after being banned in the USSR. 'The Queue fits no conventional literary genre: without narrative or stage direction, without, for the most part, identified characters, it can hardly be called either a novel or play. More than anything, perhaps it resembles a musical score - the score of a bizarre street symphony. Its notes are words, grunts, cries all the noises humans make when talking, cursing, drinking tea, swallowing sour cream, making love. It's instruments are the voices of Soviet citizens, members of a gigantic queue somewhere in the suburbs of present day Moscow [...] What are all these people waiting for? It's never entirely clear' (introduction).