Norm

Golden hands are melted down, the heart given to the girl pulsates in a glass jar, a lonely accordion staggers down the street. Vladimir Sorokin's first novel became a mischievous dance on the bones of socialist realism: the writer materialized previous metaphors and added a new one to them - the norm. From a normal point of view, only a criminal or a madman can 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, against the backdrop of attempts to revive the Soviet myth, the novel has acquired a new sound - as have the eternal questions about the relationship between the artist and the crowd, morality.