'Oprichnik' a Brilliant, Bizarre Satire of Modern Russia

In Vladimir Sorokin's "Day of the Oprichnik," the reader is bombarded with a sea of brutal, surreal images: a nobleman hanged on the iron gates of his palace, an orgy in a bathhouse, a murderous police force getting high by eating golden fish, a soothsayer who speaks her predictions by the light of a pile of burning Russian novels.