Depeche Mode is an interesting and disturbing novel about life in the Ukraine soon after the Soviet era ended. The story involves characters who attempt to get through their days looking for some modicum of structure and meaning.
Depeche Mode is essentially a sketch of what is was like to be young in the immediate post-Soviet era: lacking prospects and stuck in a gray zone between state socialism and the rapidly developing capitalism and Western culture, the narrator and his friends simply let life roll over them, gaining whatever pleasure they can from their on the hoof adventures and stolen bottles of cognac (amongst other intoxicating substances).Zhadan's pacing is excellent: his style moves alternately between jagged, fast flowing prose as the three central characters tumble around 1990s Kharkiv in search of their colleague, Sasha Carburetor, and a sleepy, philosophical mode, both of which Zhadan uses to explore various contemporary themes such as anti-Semitism, Marxism-Leninism, ethnic identity and pop culture (hence the reference to Depeche Mode, who are the subjects of a hilarious radio pseudobiography).
The more I think about this book, the more I like it. I picked it up because the opening pages I read sounded so iconically Ukrainian that it made me miss living there.
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