The Tsar of Love and Techno

by Anthony Marra

A Granta Best Young American Novelist

1930s Leningrad: a failed portrait artist employed by Soviet censors must erase political dissenters from official images and artworks. One day, he receives an antique painting. The mystery behind this painting threads together each of the stories that follow, where we meet a Siberian beauty queen, a young soldier in the battlefields of Chechnya, the Head of the Grozny Tourist Bureau, a ballerina performing for the camp director of a gulag and many others.

• ISBN10: 1448138507
• ISBN13: 9781448138500
• Publish Date: 4 August 2016 (first published 6 October 2015)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Vintage Publishing
• Imprint: Vintage Digital
• Format: eBook (EPUB)
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[Artemis]

Reviews at The Artemis Reader

I feel like words cannot accurately describe how much I enjoyed these short stories. Marra manages to produce the ideal mixtape with The Tsar of Love and Techno. Marra returns readers to the terror of Soviet Russia and Stalin’s purges and the challenges of post-Soviet life. From the Siberian mining city of Kirovsk to rural Chechnya, Marra weaves intelligent and thought-provoking stories of choice, chance, history, and fate.

He connects these stories not only through characters, but with objects, to create a vibrant landscape of a story. His characters are well paced throughout each short story, allowing the reader to easily move throughout this unfamiliar, complex world. A worthwhile read!

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

When I first read A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, I knew I had found a new favourite author in Anthony Marra. I was constantly recommending the novel to everyone and always took notice when someone suggested a book was the next Constellation. They were right with both All that is Solid Melts into Air and Girl at War. When I heard that Marra had another book coming out I was so excited. Then when it was released, there was no Australian publication and it would cost about $50 to get a copy delivered to me. I thought about just getting the audiobook but I really wanted a physical copy. Thankfully the Perth Writers Festival announced Anthony Marra as a guest and we quickly got an Australian edition of The Tsar of Love and Techno.

Unlike A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, The Tsar of Love and Techno is a collection of interconnecting stories. While it could be considered a collection of short stories, there is a common thread that allows this book to be read more like a novel. Beginning in 1930s Leningrad where a failed portrait artist finds himself with the task of airbrushing people out of existence. The people being removed from the pictures are the people the state have sent off to the Gulag for their counter-revolutionary behaviours. He finds himself removing his brother from pictures but instead of whipping him out of the memories completely he ends up putting his face in the crowds of other pictures.

There is something wonderfully captivating about the writing of Anthony Marra, and I think it goes further than just my love of Russian literature. I cannot help but be absorbed in his stories, eager to know what happens next. I love the way he explores Russian history and looks at ideas of war, censorship, family, love and the soviet government. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena does a good job of exploring the lives of ordinary people during war and The Tsar of Love and Techno is all about the people living in Russia during different periods of time.

While I think A Constellation of Vital Phenomena will always have a special place in my heart and everyone should read that book, The Tsar of Love and Techno is still worth the attention. I know some people have issues reading short story collections but I think this works as a novel. I am eagerly waiting the next Anthony Marra novel but I know I will have to wait a while. I just hope I do not have to suffer the same fate with The Tsar of Love and Techno, and Australia will release at the same time as the rest of the world.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://www.knowledgelost.org/book-reviews/genre/short-stories-genre/tsar-love-techno-anthony-marra/

[Lianne]

I was approved an ARC of this book by the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This review in its entirety was originally posted at eclectictales.com: http://www.eclectictales.com/blog/2015/12/09/review-the-tsar-of-love-and-techno/

A few pages into this book I already knew that I had something special in my hands; I was absolutely drawn into the stories featured in this book. When I first heard of it, I was curious to know how these various stories–the 1930s censor, young wayward men conscripted to fight in the first Chechen war, a woman who briefly became a movie star–would intersect; having read it now, I am amazed at how the author seamlessly wove these seemingly different stories from different periods throughout the twentieth century together. I would gasp in delight when a reference from a previous story would make an appearance in a later story or a story seemingly ended would be picked up at another point. I should also note that Anthony Marra does a wonderful job in bringing those various periods of twentieth century Russia to life, whether it be the socio-economic difficulties of the 1990s and now to the height of the Great Terror in the late 1930s; it really felt like I was there with the characters as I was reading their stories unfold.

What’s also really captivating about this collection of stories is the range of stories that it tells. These characters face some really stark realities, either in the past or the present (or both) and their reactions and just the emotions and conundrums they go through are just so human. I really felt for these characters regardless of how remote their life experiences are from my own; they just want to survive, to live and love without reserve or politics or fear or guilt. Often times things turn out bleak–relationships end, family intervenes (for good or for ill), the times have changed–but even the bleakest of characters have their moments of clarity and something close to contentedness, even if it’s something as small as a conversation with a fellow comrade or taking pride in their training and their work.

The writing, like A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, was absolutely stunning, perhaps even more so here. I found myself stopping a lot while reading, going back, re-reading a sentence or a paragraph, because the turn of phrase was just amazing: sometimes funny, sometimes beautiful, sometimes just achingly haunting for something the character longs for and that has already passed.

If this write-up doesn’t say too much about the book, it’s because I don’t want to go deep into spoiler territory because it’s really a book you need to read for yourself. The Tsar of Love and Techno was just fantastic from start to finish, I can’t say there was a story in this collection that I didn’t enjoy; they all had their own merits and fascinating points about them. I highly recommend checking out this book (and his previous novel)!