A set of satirical short stories about backstabbery, dysfunction and repression in the USSR during the time of (mostly) Stalin (though he's not mentioned by name), with the Borgesian touch that the narrator purports to be analyzing and reconstructing a history from other (fictional?) texts about its characters.

Short, but not a quick read: it's dense with unfamiliar names of places and historical figures, in an abbreviated style that doesn't telegraph where it's going. Some compelling moments and wry dark comedy. Once well-connected people falling out of favor and going to prison, things of that nature. Might get more out of it on a second read through.

Despite being called a novel in a back-cover blurb, each story here stands on its own, with only a rare passing reference to a character in another story.

I read this because William T. Vollmann praised it as an inspiration for Europe Central (and wrote an afterword apparently, but not in my edition), but it didn't click with me as much as that novel did.