»The book almost casually delivers a pitch-black commentary on today’s Russia.«

»In the rhythm of terse, cool sentences and with caustic sarcasm, the novel exposes brutalisation and Bolshevik paranoia, in which the Russian war in Ukraine is mirrored as if by itself.«

»Sasha Filipenko stages this with stylistic skill. His interrogation novel reads like a duel – with terse syntax, quick repartee and razor-sharp humour.«

»A superb book of investigation and imagination.«

»With his novel on Russia’s past, Sasha Filipenko establishes a connection to the present and tells, in a gut-wrenching manner, of life under a dictatorship of despotism and brutality, and of the insanity of war.«

»Sasha Filipenko has mastered the art of drastic change. From comedy to cruel tragedy, from irony to poetry, from metaphorical play to documentary prose. This is what makes the literary appeal and ultimately the tension of the text.«

»A novel that plays virtuosically with fact and fiction.«

»The inside view of a society in which total state terror is imposed has oppressive features, yet Filipenko noticeably sets out to present an entertaining novel with downright hilarious passages.«

»The book is pervaded by a coldness that goes to the core, but its narrator Pyotr is not cold. How the author manages to turn Pyotr Nesterenko into a soldier - a less than well-behaved one - who survives all the horrors while seeing them with brutal clarity is simply breathtaking.«