Their Four Hearts

Sorokin (The Queue) follows the missions of an absurd task force at the end of the Soviet Union in this bizarre story. The principal characters revolve around a man named Viktor Valentinych Rebrov, who, with a militaristic regimen, leads the group through strange and macabre acts of violence. After Rebrov, athlete Olga Vladimirovna Pestretsova, and 60-something Henry Ivanych Shtaube are joined by a young teenage runaway named Seryozha, they conduct an avant-garde exercise called “Pre-Operation No. 1,” in which they all get naked, Shtaube climbs into a cube strapped to Rebrov’s back, and they recite a series of numbers, colors, and other lists. Then, for what is evidently “Operation No. 1,” Seryozha leads them to his apartment, where the group murder his parents and mutilate their bodies. Many more violent episodes follow, as well as scenes of graphic sex and child molestation, illustrated with moody charcoal drawings by Gregory Klassen that, along with the characters’ archetypes, satirize social realist tropes with exaggerated grotesquerie. The overall result is an enthralling, if disgusting, view of Soviet reality, which readers may find simultaneously refreshing and repulsive. More lurid than revelatory, this works as a pained expression of its historical moment. (Apr.)