The Mushroom-Picker

After two years in Moscow, Clea—ex-Troyskyite and militant vegetarian—has returned to London with her Russian husband only to witness a complete change in his personality. In Moscow he was known for his obsession with Western cuisine. In England his eccentricity has taken a U-turn. He is a sub-species of homo sovieticus, incapable of fitting into any culture, an alien at home and abroad.
As the story moves from a gathering of drunken Muscovites to a bizarre mushroom-picking party on an English nuclear base, from the dire everyday existence in a Soviet communal flat to the shocking farce of sex and adultery in an English kitchen, Zinovy Zinik immerses the reader in an absurdist satire, malicious, penetrating, but always even-handed, about one of this country's least regarded figures, the involuntary exile, the political refugee.
Zinik is the first modern Russian writer to write about English mores through the prism of Soviet eyes. He is uniquely placed to do so. Born in Moscow in 1945, he emigrated in 1975 and settled with his family in London, where he works as a freelance writer. His five previous novels have been translated and published throughout Europe. The Mushroom-Picker is his first to appear in English.

[Taken from inside the dust jacket]