Dust

Unashamedly hyper-intellectual, and proud to wear its considerable erudition on its sleeve, this collection of essays by poet and translator Arkadii Dragomoshchenko is a gift to culture-hungry readers.

Transplanting the European tradition of the flaneur to locales as various as St Petersburg and Manhattan, Dragomoshchenko weaves intricately abstract tapestries of psychogeography, memory and exile, all the while drawing on an eclectic grab-bag of cultural references high and low. It's not easy work to get through this slim volume, but the author's combination of free-associative riffing and sheer allusive density reaps considerable rewards.

Anyone who can write that the view of New York from a descending plane 'recalls nothing so much as a scullery of cockle shells at the bottom of an ancient galleon', between digressions about early modern coded manuscripts and Chilean wine, deserves at least a medal for audacity.

The great surprise - and virtue - of these essays is that he so frequently gets away with it. That he can do all this while writing sensitively and cogently about eroticism, love and loss only makes Dragomoshchenko's achievement more impressive.