This is next on my reading list…Omon Ra is a heart-breakingly bleak, absurdist, farce. Ostensibly a satire about the Soviet space programme – in which expendable young men are suborned for the pride of their Motherland into suicidally manning ‘automated’ spacecraft – this work goes much deeper and far wider. Beneath the layers of social satire are musings on the nature of reality, on growing up, on friendship. The despair-ridden backdrop, far bleaker than any moonscape, is shot through with moments of real tenderness.
