Anthony Burgess’s novel is an Anglo-Russian comedy, which takes us into the heart of the Cold War world of mutual love-hate and incomprehension. Pro-Russians, anti-Russians even Russians themselves will find plenty here to be delighted and outraged by.
To Leningrad sail Paul Hussey, an antique dealer from Sussex, and his American wife Belinda. Paul is trying to make some money by selling, of course illegally, nylon dresses to a people rich in cosmonauts but poor in consumer goods. Leningrad turns out to be a city in which daylight dawns in the middle of the night: Paul learns some unnerving truths about his own sexual nature but also that of his wife, who is by now receiving the keenest attention from a philosophical ‒ and
amorous – female doctor in the State Medical Service. Selling nylons becomes backseat, and sheer survival paramount in what can only be described as a unexpected conclusion to the trip.
Honey for the Bears may be one of the author’s lesser-known novels but as Andrew Biswell writes in his new introduction: ‘It is a forgotten masterpiece, now happily rediscovered’
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