Petersburg

A dizzy, impressionistic and occasionally downright demented  portrait of a city on the edge of revolution, Petersburg takes its place among the great city-novels like Ulysses and Berlin Alexanderplatz. Bely applied all the stylistic fireworks in the arsenal of Russian Symbolism to the task of putting the St Petersburg of the pre-revolutionary years onto the page - complete with moving statues, ticking bombs, free-floating paranoia, assassinations, and a mysterious masquer in a red domino costume. The result is a technicolour brainquake of a novel, full of foreboding and explosive energy.