Monday Starts on Saturday

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Every now and then one chances upon a novel, little known in the West, that deserves to sell more copies than cookbooks. Monday Starts on Saturday is one such novel.

As to why it is so little known in Anglophone territories, I’m not sure I can understand. It is probably true that the Strugatsky brothers are best known in the West for their great science fiction novel Roadside Picnic (1972), made into the almost unbearably powerful film Stalker (1979) by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. That film has perhaps overlaid Western perceptions of the sort of books the Strugatskys wrote. In fact the original Roadside Picnic novel is considerably more varied and perky than Tarkovsky’s cinematic masterpiece; in fact, that’s true of all the novels written by these two giants of Russian science fiction. Their output was large and varied, but they were always inventive, charming, thought-provoking, and wonderful writers. And Monday Starts on Saturday is not just an ingenious and gripping read but simply a delight from start to finish. Some novels provoke admiration, some a cooler and more distanced respect. This is a novel with which to fall in love.

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