Vassily Karamanov is a prophet, a paranoiac, a blasphemer, and a man who believes that human beings as a species have reached the zenith of their evolution. An orphan, he spent seven years in reform school, his only companions the guard dogs that kept him from escaping. He rejects the mafioso mentality of contemporary Russia. Playing the naïf, he denounces artists, politicians, and scientists alike. What obsesses him is the idea of a genetic mutation that will enable homo sapiens to metamorphose into homo cosmicus, the species to which Karamanov has assigned all the great thinkers he venerates—the species humans shall become when they take up the challenge of evolution and transcend their mere humanity. For Karamanov, that time is now.

In this measured torrent of stream-of-consciousness, author Potemkine skillfully draws the reader into Karamanov’s world, as his narrator recounts a turbulent past peppered with idiosyncratic philosophy and revolutionary ideas. The reader enters the mindset of a singularly eccentric man, part Christ, part Grand Inquisitor, whose skewed worldviews are nevertheless trenchant and true.

Moi combines conscious homage to Dostoevsky with the intellectual freight of Herzog in a sweeping portrait of today’s Russia.