As a "hero" [the title character of "The Good Soldier Chomkin"] springs from much earlier models: Chekhov's little men, Tolstoy's simple peasants, Leskov's eccentric and slightly ridiculous "saints" and, above all perhaps, Ivan-durak, the stupid peasant of Russian folk-tales, who leads a charmed life in close communion with animals and nature, and whose cheerful simplicity brings him miraculous victories over the rich, sophisticated and powerful of this world. Literary and pre-literary echoes surround Chonkin. His very origins are mysterious: rumour has it that he may be the illegitimate son of the last Prince Golitsyn. On the other hand, his father may have been a shepherd. Who knows? But he clearly springs from a twilight world of the pre-revolutionary popular and literary imagination. The irruption of this unlikely yet ordinary figure into Soviet society provides the opportunity for a satire which reveals not only the absurdities of the system...