This is the second short story collection by Vladislavić, from 1996. The eleven stories vary from the relatively conventional to the insanely busy: there's a lot of very good stuff, but in places a good idea seems to be buried under the weight of a thousand others, as in the title story — where a shebeen-owner writes off to the Soviet foreign ministry to enquire about the possibility of acquiring a surplus statue of Lenin to decorate his newly-legal tavern — or "Autopsy", where The King is spotted coming out of Estoril Books in Johannesburg. The surreal "Isle of Capri" and the Borgesian "The Omniscope" are less extreme examples, but still seem to be trying a bit too hard.

I particularly enjoyed "The Tuba", where an old-school racist tries to disrupt a Salvation Army band and ends up making music with them, and "The Book Lover", where the narrator explores inconclusive clues to the life of an earlier owner, a woman called Helena Shein, he finds in secondhand books picked up in various Johannesburg bookshops (this was especially fun because several of the books concerned are ones I happened to read recently). "The Whites Only bench" is another very good story, as is "Courage", a story about an artist who comes to a remote village to look for a model for a post-liberation statue. "'Kidnapped'" (a story about not writing a story) and "The Firedogs" were fun too.

Not in the same league as his more recent book Portrait with keys, but a very interesting collection. ( )