"That gigantic flattened human hive"

Adam Thirlwell's piece in the NYRB about the Soviet writer Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky is an enjoyable read. (K's wordplay rubs off on the reviewer: Thirlwell starts off by talking about Moscow's obsession with renovation in the mid-1920s, then rapidly segues into Communist repression, calling the city "a hive of constriction"!) Some of the quoted passages from K's work are very nice, esp. considering that they are translated:

• stone angels with their penguin-like wings grazing the earth
• For a minute the story stopped. Wasteland and kitchen gardens stretched all about us. Along a distant embankment, shavings of white locomotive smoke curled up into the air in elongated rings. 

And of course there is much to be said for anyone who writes a story titled "The Branch Line."