{{Short description|Novel by Russian author Vladimir Sorokin}} {{Infobox book | name = Blue Lard | image = File:Blue_Lard_book_cover.png | alt = | caption = Cover of the 2024 English edition by NYRB | author = Vladimir Sorokin | title_orig = {{noitalic|Голубое сало}} | orig_lang_code = ru | translator = Max Lawton | country = Russia | language = Russian | genre = Novel, Postmodern fiction, Dystopian fiction | publisher = Ad Marginem (Russian), NYRB (English) | pub_date = 1999 | english_pub_date = 2024 | pages = | isbn = | oclc = | dewey = | congress = }} '''''Blue Lard''''' ({{langx|ru|Голубое сало|Goluboye salo}}) is a postmodern novel by Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin. It was first published in 1999 by Ad Marginem.
==Plot== The plot of the book revolves around a substance called "blue lard" that the clones of Russian writers produce when they write<ref name="NYT">{{cite web |last=Illingworth |first=Dustin |date=25 February 2024 |title=This Book Is Baffling, Debauched and Perfectly Human |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/books/review/vladimir-sorokin-blue-lard.html |access-date=8 March 2024 |website=New York Times |quote=It begins in Russia, in 2068, when scientists have set about cloning the country’s great past writers in a clandestine Siberian lab. The novels, stories and poems these clones produce are of little importance; the scientists’ true quarry is the blue lard that forms on the clones’ bodies as they perform the “script process.”}}</ref> which is then used to power a hidden reactor on the moon.<ref name="PW">{{cite web |author= |date=12 December 2023 |title=Blue Lard |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781681378183 |access-date=8 March 2024 |website=Publishers Weekly |publisher= |quote=Their crazed output turns out to be a mere by-product of the scientists’ true purpose: to produce the “blue lard” used to power a hidden reactor on the moon.}}</ref> Some of the cloned Russian writers include Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Akhmatova, Chekhov and Nabokov.<ref name="PW" /> The novel takes place in two timelines: the second half of the 21st century (set in Siberia and Moscow in the future) and an alternative timeline of 1954 (in Joseph Stalin's Moscow and Adolf Hitler's Third Reich).
==Reception== In June 2002, a Russian youth activist group, Walking Together, threw portions of copies of the book into a toilet installed outside the Bolshoi Theatre, in protest of Sorokin's collaboration with the Theatre. The group accused Sorokin of writing pornography, due to the novel's inclusion of a gay sex scene between Khrushchev and Stalin. The toilet was blown up in September 2002 by a group calling itself "The Red Partisans".<ref>{{cite news |title="Идущие вместе" подорвались на своем унитазе |url=https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/340650 |access-date=30 June 2024 |work=Kommersant |date=12 September 2002 |language=ru}}</ref>
The novel received positive reviews from the New York Times and Publishers Weekly.<ref name="NYT" /><ref name="PW"/> A review from the Financial Times stated that the book helped "cement Sorokin’s place among the greats."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Weaver |first1=Courtney |title=Vladimir Sorokin's Blue Lard and Red Pyramid — surreal Russian satire that still shocks |url=https://www.ft.com/content/065477c7-5e08-4457-92f0-b423dcd69c35 |access-date=30 June 2024 |work=Financial Times |date=15 March 2024}}</ref>
Larissa Volokhonsky stated that it was the only book she ever asked to have removed from her house.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Remnick |first1=David |title=The Translation Wars |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/11/07/the-translation-wars |access-date=30 June 2024 |magazine=The New Yorker |date=30 October 2005}}</ref>
==References== {{reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Blue Lard}} Category:1999 Russian novels Category:Postmodern novels Category:Dystopian novels Category:NYRB Classics Category:Novels set in the 2060s Category:Novels by Vladimir Sorokin