Detailing a man's mental breakdown—and his obsessions with a seductress named Lolita, the omnipresent ''them,'' and the need to uncover what's ''really going on''—Vilnius Poker is an epic, paranoid novel about the surreal absurdities and horrors of life under Soviet rule. In the words of Kirkus Reviews, ''think of it as The Matrix behind the Iron Curtain—unsettling and profoundly interesting.''