Eric, I remember about my promise, but starting to compile some list of modern Russian literature, that you could find interesting, I have met a problem - there is no translations of these books into English or other European languages.
I can say, that "The Chronicles of Eho" is not the book you need. It is some kind of the pulp fiction of good quality, but there is no problems and ideas of modern Russia in it.
I have found 3 books, that may be interesting for you. They are rather popular in Russia, rather new and in some way characterize our way of thinking.
If you could read these books in Russian, I think you will find them more interesting than Akunin or Max Frei
They are:
Alexey Ivanov THE GEOGRAPHER DRANK AWAY HIS GLOBE (Geograf globus propil)
With his latest bestseller, Alexei Ivanov has secured his position as number one moral spokesman for Russia’s Generation X, as Bret Easton Ellis once was for America and Michel Houellebecq for France.
Geographer Drank Away His Globe is a poignant narrative about Victor Sluzhkin, 28-year old romantic and buffoon, who signs on as a teacher of geography in a secondary school in his native Perm (in the Urals) and gets lost in a haze of hard vodka, desperate love for a nymphet-like student, the stress of educating troubled teenagers with attitude like those in Irina Denezhkina’s short stories, and twisted family relationships.
Geographer, as the older students immediately dub Sluzhkin, attempts to escape from the grueling, dull, economically and emotionally stultifying reality of Russia’s provincial life in a rafting tour to the Urals. Accompanied by wild, adventure-seeking adolescents, faced with the numerous grim surprises of the taiga, icy mountain rivers, and local drunks, Geographer is poised to find himself and his own truth. Armed with his only moral principle, “Be a man, and whatever will be will be,” Geographer is unaware that his future is to become another living echo of Houellebecq’s prediction in
TO STAY ALIVE: “As you approach the truth, your solitude will only increase”.
Ivanov’s novel is at once an engaging page-turner and a remarkable literary achievement. Ivanov maneuvers masterfully between a confessional erotic story, a
Bildungsroman or coming-of-age story, an adventure story, and a vivid psychological account. This simple personal narrative is written with a sincerity that is both tender and compelling. It is an illuminating book for anyone who has ever known isolation and the pull of desperate longing.
Literary Agency "Goumen&Smirnova"
Dmitry Bykov ORTHOGRAPHY (Orfografiya)
I have not found good review in English. Only this:
The novel is set in Petrograd and the Crimea in 1918 and stars, not surprisingly, a popular journalist with literary ambitions. All around him are academics, writers and artists who are taken aback by the political turmoil. Many of the characters are variations on real people of that time, and it is a special delight to trace the prototypes behind the pseudonyms. A novel about Russia and its historical destiny, "Orthography" is unique for lacking the high-pitched pathos that one might easily expect from Bykov. A love novel, it never resorts to tasteless eroticism or sentimentality, and is remarkably well researched. It is, in short, the closest approximation to "the great Russian novel" of post-Soviet times.
CONTEXT - This Week in Arts and Ideas from The Moscow Times
Dmitry Glukhovsky METRO 2033
DMITRY GLUKHOVSKY, 30, Kremlin reporter, foreign affairs specialist, former war correspondent
Prediction made in 2005 for 2033
Prediction
The world has just suffered a nuclear war; contamination and radiation destroy all surface life on earth. All who stay above ground face death or mutation. Muscovites take refuge in the metro, whose formidable doors keep radiation and aggressive mutants out.
The few surviving engineers construct underground water filtering stations and power plants. Metro dwellers tend mushroom farms, breed pigs and engage in commerce. However, warfare becomes a favorite pastime. The metro soon divides into tiny city-stations, known as "metropolitanates," each with a political system of its own. Instead of joining hands for survival and fighting rats, bellicose mutants and abject poverty, the stations wage war on each other. Coalitions come and go, as recent allies become sworn enemies.
Grounds for Prediction
Glukohvsky states: "I do not think another cold war is far off. Every news story reads like a dystopian thriller about World War Three. Confrontation gets tougher with every passing day. Russia is reluctant to meet the West halfway, and its foreign policy is becoming increasingly independent."
He remarks that it is "no wonder [that] the West is becoming paranoid, as are Russians. The West wants to deploy its missile defense system in Poland. Russia strikes back by threatening to quit the CFE treaty. Russia talks of military threats nonstop and alleges that America has resumed the arms race. American television says the Putin regime is becoming unmanageable."
He concludes that "mutual trust is dwindling. It's hard to say who is to blame. A nuclear conflict was hardly possible during the 1970s and 1980s. Now, there is a far greater chance of that happening."
Material prepared by Anna Starobinets, Moscow (first published in the magazine Russky Reporter)
Doomsday? - Russia Beyond the Headlines