The action of The Slynx, which the writer embarked upon shortly after the Chernobyl disaster, takes place in an unspecified future, 20 years after the Big Bang in the town of Fyodor-Kuzmichsk, which had in the distant past been Moscow. The survivors living in forests and swamps feed on mice and radio-active dates: their way of thinking is archaic and they venerate their main benefactor – Fyodor Kuzmich, who gave them fire, letters of the alphabet, the wheel and much else. They are frightened of the cats living in their woods, which remain out of sight but are considered dangerous. In this novel Tolstaya creates an all-embracing mythopoetic image of a “Russian world” standing on its eternal foundations, an image of Russian eternity, which cannot be reduced to either a prophecy or a condemnation of the past. In the finale this world goes up in flames.
As far as its style is concerned the novel Kys combines a lyrical core (numerous echoes of classical Russian poetry and prose) and a quasi-folktale, in which Tatyana Tolstaya’s creative use of language comes into its own.