Diptych (two stories) by one of the most interesting English prose writers of the generation of forty-year-olds. The first book by Will Self, a former restaurant critic, journalist and columnist for the Evening Standard and Observer, in Russian. The combination of traditional English storytelling and dark grotesquery has become the signature style of this writer. Of the Russian authors, Self is closest to Pelevin, who in England is often called the “Russian Will Self.”