Kangaroo

"Kangaroo is a novel of the most devastating, the most terrifying hilarity. It belongs to the genre of satire; however, its net effect is neither revulsion at the system nor comic relief, but pure metaphysical terror. This effect has a lot less to do with the author´s apocalyptical worldview as such than with the quality of his ear. The hero of Kangaroo is a professional pickpocket whose career spans the entire history of soviet Russia, and the novel is an epic yarn spun out in the foulest of language, for which either "slang" or "argot" fails as a definition." Joseph Brodsky