In Vasily Aksenov’s novel “Caesarean Glow,” the action—sometimes quite realistic, sometimes utterly fantastic—is rapidly transferred from present-day Russia to America, to the Cuckoo Islands, fictional by the author, to Europe, again to Russia and America. The main characters are the “new Russian” Slava Gorelik, his beloved Natasha and the elderly writer Stas Vaksino, in whom the author is easily guessed.