Zamyatin’s Alatyr. (opens in new tab)

I’m back to reading Zamyatin’s early novellas, and have come to the last of the pre-revolutionary ones, the 1915 Алатырь (Alatyr′). It doesn’t seem to have been translated or much talked about, but it’s interesting in several respects; it’s a sort of magic-realist account of a provincial town built “on the very spot where countless mushrooms once sat in a circle around the Alatyr stone” (На том самом месте, где раньше грибы несчетно сидели кругом алатыря-камня). I’ll provide the description g...