<div>Venichka Erofeev (Venya), cultured alcoholic, self-mocking intellectual, regales us with an account of his heroic’ odyssey from Moscow to provincial Petushki. Stories of his rich, turbulent inner life abound as he staggers through Brezhnev’s Moscow and encounters dangerous, eccentric and often hilarious strangers on a train, but his journey ends when fate cruelly intervenes.</div>