The Suitcase

Sergei Dovlatov · 1941–1990 · USSR / USA

Originally Chemodan (Russian)

Why it matters

Each item in the narrator's single emigration suitcase (a suit, some boots) unspools into a deadpan story of Soviet absurdity. Dovlatov's compressed, comic exile prose at its most perfectly controlled.

At a glance

Short, deadpan, tightly controlled anecdotes with plain sentence-level construction.