There are any number of reasons for going to Moscow in the year 2042. One woman on the flight hopes to be cured of cancer; a fellow Russian aims to restore the monarchy. I'm on my way, with several vodkas inside me, to satisfy my needling curiosity. Of course the price of the ticket was the problem. If New Times magazine hadn't paid all expenses for the story I'd still be in Stockdorf...Having overcome several surprising obstacles (including a brief kidnapping and a dalliance in Toronto) the exiled Soviet writer Kartsev launches himself on an adventure that is bawdy and outrageous. With a cast of characters that includes a KGB agent disguised in lederhosen and another wirier in exile - the towering, moralizing, authoritarian Sim Simych Karnalov - he takes us into the bizarre Soviet Union f the 21st Century. Marx's vision has reached absurd proportions and Communism has become a parody of itself - there is even a Bureauof Natural Functions and a Palace of Love. From encounters in Moscow's seedier quarters to confrontations with the Keepers of the Kremlin, Kartsev's escapades are hilarious. Moscow 2042 is an unprecedented merging of reality and the imagination. It is profoundly penetrating and timely, a dazzling display of wit and wisdom and surely one of the most memorable works of comic literature.