Homo Sovieticus

Like his creator, the narrator of this unclassifiable workhe himself constructs the lumbering term ""novel-denunciation-report-tyrade''is a ``Soviet emigre in the West'' living in a pension in West Berlin with others of his ilk bearing such tags as the Cynic, the Joker, the Whiner, the Dissident. The slight fictive elements are not significant here; what matters is that an incisive intelligence delivers a blistering denunciation of the Soviet system. Dripping venom, the narrator ranges in systematic fashion through the actions of the communist regime from 1917 to the present, excoriating Soviet history. Seen through the cold eye of the observer, the System is duplicitous, corrupt, inefficient and boring, when it is not simply maddening. This furious, outraged, highly theatrical monologue documenting the emergence of the New Man, Homo sovieticus, will seem a definitive portrait to those familiar with the ways of the Kremlin. (May 26p)