Baize-Covered Table With Decanter

"A deceptively flat title conceals this brilliant fictional exploration of how modern totalitarian states generally operate; not with gulags and gas chambers, but with simpler and subtler tools, like tables and interrogations, unanswerable questions and guilt. What matters is not brute power, but psychology and information. Vladimir Makanin owes a considerable debt to Kafka...that is gracefully acknowledged...Makanin, Vladimir is the author of 'Baize-Covered Table With Decanter' with ISBN 9780930523664 and ISBN 0930523660.