Tournament of Books discussion

thread to discuss "The Tsar of Love and Techno" by Anthony Marra

I just finished and was really impressed! I can see why it made the tournament.

I should have paid attention sooner, but didn't realize that the "collection of short stories" is really read better as a novel. Usually with short stories I like to read them in between other books since I don't always like reading them back to back. By the third or fourth story, I realized how connected they were and ended up re-reading the first two.

One thing that doesn't often get pointed out is how this connects to A Constellation of Vital Phenomena... you can read them separately but they are awesome together, with some points that connect.

"To say he felt guilty would ascribe to him ethical borders that were lines on a map of a country that no longer existed." - oof Marra can write about leaders so well.

Anyone else regularly return to Ramzan Kazyrov's Instagram after reading this book?

I really loved this, and feel the need to reread it someday while diagraming the relationships between all the characters - I think I missed out on some stuff because I didn't realize soon enough how connected the stories were.