SOURCE: A review of The Fur Hat, in World Literature Today, Vol. 64, No. 4, Autumn, 1990, pp. 661–62.

In the following review, Worswick detects a sad undercurrent in The Fur Hat, and questions the novel's value following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Vladimir Voinovich's latest work, a novella, is fully in the mold of earlier writing by this talented satirist (see WLT 55:4, pp. 627-28). It especially reminds one of his books of the seventies, The Ivankiad and The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (see WLT 51:1, p. 114, and BA 50:4, p. 901 respectively), though the new work lacks the immediate passion of the former and the broad sweep of the latter. Narrowly focused, The Fur Hat recounts the last days of Yefim Rakhlin, who writes novels in the socialist-realist vein and thereby secures for himself a comfortable life in Moscow, although he is said not to spare himself when researching...