SOURCE: “Future Matters,” in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4438, April 22–28, 1988, p. 453.

In the following review, Laird describes Moscow 2042 as an example of utopian literature, classifying the novel as a parody of the satirical conventions of the genre.

In the year 2042, Vladimir Voinovich, alias the exiled writer Kartsev, returns to his homeland courtesy of a Lufthansa time machine and finds that he is lionized there as a classic of Preliminary Literature. Or, in other words, literature written before the Great August Revolution, when the Genialissimo began building Communism in One City with the help of the KPGB (Party and KGB combined) and an ideology that has casually incorporated Kartsev himself, Jesus Christ and the Immaculate Conception. Did Voinovich foresee, when he embarked on this odyssey in 1982, that his forerunners in Utopia—Zamyatin and Orwell—would, only six years on, be published in his homeland too? If he did, he must...