COMMISSARIAT OF ENLIGHTENMENT_THE. (K.Kalfus)

In this glitteringly original first novel, Ken Kalfus, author of the acclaimed story collections Thirst and PU-239, presents an odd and mesmerizing vision of the supremacy of the image over the word. The year is 1910. Count Leo Tolstoy is dying slowly (so slowly, in fact, that it seems as if the old fellow will never die) in a dark, ghostly, remote town in Russia. How famous is Tolstoy So famous that the formerly nowhere town of Astapovo becomes a media circus (think Park City, Utah, at Sundance) overrun by a hideous new breed of monster: the blood-lusting celebrity press.