The Library of Babel

Biagi wrote this book a few years before the collapse of the whole structure. This reportage looks like science fiction from another planet right now. You won't find the bald melancholic Mikhail, the drunken homey Boris and the democratic dictator Vladimir in this excellent travel to former USSR because they still had to come.

Nevertheless if you're interested in discovering better people like Rasputin, Krusciov, Tolstoj, Pasternak, Cechov, Mandel'stam, Blok, Evtusenko, Achmatova and Majakovskij or even the Josif Džugašvili and Vladimir Ulyanov "human" side you should read this book. Unfortunately I'm all but sure that "Russia" is English translated. What a pity if not.

Biagi interviews sons and daughters, nephews and nieces, grandsons and granddaughters of a bunch of characters who made a Russia which doesn't exist anymore.

Yet, the most astonishing part of the whole book is probably the one in which Biagi explores love, feelings and sexuality among the young generations during the puritan and hypocritical regime days.