Between Dog and Wolf, originally published in Russian in 1980, is a novel built on word play and literary allusions, with plot, that most easily of conveyed elements, hidden well in the background. Those very techniques brought comparisons to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and whispers that the novel was untranslatable. A topic the author and translator discussed with Michel Martin on NPR’s All Things Considered after its English language publication in 2016.
Read “Note V” from Between Dog and Wolf, which you can also hear being read in part in an NPR interview.