'Requiem for a Soldier' by Oleg Pavlov

Written the whole way through like a joke for which the punchline never comes, this book tells the story of a Russian soldier who, first serving in the infirmary and then on the target practice range on the Kazakh steppes (where his job is to crawl along and reinstate the targets once they have been hit (an effect that looks mechanical)), is promised on discharge the gift of an indestructible iron tooth by his commander and the sets off on a rather madcap adventure involving the field ambulance and a corpse that needs transportation. The writing style is very democratic in that no detail is given more importance than another (thus sustaining an absurd effect) , so that reading the book is somewhat disconcertingly like crossing a bank of loose gravel but ending up rather further downhill than you intended because of the number of times it slides unexpectedly beneath your step. 

October 2015