RUSSENDISKO

This book is a series of bite-sized essays relating the experience of the author as he and friends leave Russia for Germany around the fall of the Berlin wall. Each essay shows the author and his friends grappling with and generally besting various authorities. His father celebrates the opening up of Russian society during the Gorbachov years by advising him to emigrate for 'Liberty is only passing through' and the best way to celebrate Russian freedom is to get out as fast as possible. The first story is about various loud Russians who came to Germany by claiming that they were of Jewish origin. Once this trickle started to become a flood the Germans introduced some elementary questioning to establish whether the incomers were indeed of Jewish heritage - this situation is fraught enough - however the newcomers repeated some doggerel and innuendo straight out of the anti-semitic Protocols of Zion to 'prove' their Jewishness. The storytelling is compelling and tends to make the reader follow one essay with the next, however I think the book is best read periodically, as otherwise the stories tend to blend one into another.