Koos Tiemersma's futuristicFriesland. Fiction, page 67 Dioraie Brand's rivenworlds. Verse, page 70 Jacques R?da's travel notes. Miscellaneous, page 79 Fiction DmitryBykov.LivingSouls. Cathy Por ter, tr. Richmond, Surrey, UK. Alma. 2010. 550 pages. ?17.99, isbn 978-1 84688-098-8 Dmitry Bykov (b. 1967) is a pro lific writer and media personality, whose Living Souls is an alterna tive-history novel, firstpublished inMoscow in 2006. Its original Rus sian title is Z/iD, an abbreviation with multiple meanings. The Eng lish title assumes that the letters stand forzhim/c dnslii (living souls), inacknowledgment ofGogol's epic Dead Souls (1841), which inspired Bykov's book. In his October 2007 interview with Radio Liberty, Bykov calls Living Souls his favorite undertaking. A blurb for the Rus sian version of the novel character izes it as "the most politically incor rect book of the new millennium." Living Souls contains a claim that"any interpretationof history is acceptable" because "all the sources have been falsified to some degree." The novel depicts Russian history as an ongoing struggle between two ethnic entities, the "Varangians" and the "Khazars" (although theydo not have much in common with the Var angians and the Khazars, as modern historiography describes them).The Khazars had allegedly conquered September - October 2010 t55 WORLD LITERATURE IN REVIEW ^ jjj^H Russia in thesixthcenturyce., while the Varangians came to replace them approximately four hundred years later. Since then, Varangians and Khazars have been fighting con tinuously for control over Russia. Meanwhile, the indigenous popula tion (which is given no ethnonym) wastes all itsenergy tryingto adapt towhichever side gains the upper hand. The novel's main action takes place in the near future, when a Khazar state called the "Great Kha ganate" (easily identifiable as Israel) goes towar with Russia (ruled at this point by theVarangians) and wages battles on its territoryintending to win itback from the Varangians. Given that By ko v's Varangians and Khazars are broadly equivalent to "Russians" and "Jews," respec tively, ZhD lends itself to accusa tions of being simultaneously Rus sophobic and anti-Semitic. A key to Bykov's intriguing attitude to ethnic Russians and ethnic Jews (the religious dimension does not seem to play a significant role for him) might be found inhis February 2004 interviewwith Radio Liberty: "The question of national identi ty {natsiona?nyi vopros) is themost important question of the twenty first century, so why avoid it? It seems to me that we won't be able to ignore the role of eitherRussians or Jews inRussian history.Why not discuss itopenly, then? I'm [partly] Jewish by origin, and I talk about topics like that with pleasure. . . . I am half-Russian too. My Russian half determines my actions, whereas my Jewishhalf determines my con victions. These halves are locked in an uncompromising clinch with each other, and I listen to their argu ments with pleasure." It is obvious that Bykov per ceives his own mixed origin as a conflictof two opposites, and there fore ZhD should perhaps be seen not so much as an alternative his tory of Russia but as a self-portrait of sorts?that is, a picture ofwhat is going on in Bykov's mind, both on its conscious and subconscious levels. It remains to be seen, how ever, whether ZhD's pale copy, Liv ing Souls (which takes the author's sting out of the shortened English version), will succeed in fascinating and/or revolting the anglophone reader toany significantdegree. Andrei Rogatchevski UniversityofGlasgow daran Carson. The Pen Frfend. Bel fast. Blackstaff (Dufour, distr.). 2010 (?2009). 256 pages + 13plates. ?14.99 / $32.95. ISBN 978-0-85640-815-1 Ciaran Carson is a prolific poet, prose writer, and translator whose work has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Award for IrishPoetry, the Irish Book Award, and theT. S. Eliot Prize. ThePen Friend is Carson's sixthwork of extended prose and follows his early composi tions in thathe establishes a fairly strong structure,which allows him to "fill it/'so tospeak,with extended discourses on a variety of topics. In ShamrockTea (2001), forexample, he created a book of 101 chapters, each titleda distinct...