The Senility of Vladimir P. — Michael Honig

A biting satire of a particular despot and a haunting allegory of the fragility of goodness and the contagion of unchecked power.

Set twenty-odd years from now, it opens on Patient Number One―Vladimir Putin, largely forgotten in his presidential dacha, serviced by a small coterie of house staff, drifting in and out of his memories of the past. His nurse, charged with the twenty-four-hour care of his patient, is blissfully unaware that his colleagues are using their various positions to skim money, in extraordinarily creative ways, from the top of their employer's seemingly inexhaustible riches.

But when a family tragedy means that the nurse suddenly needs to find a fantastical sum of money fast, the dacha's chef lets him in on the secret world of backhanders and bribes going on around him, and opens his eyes to a brewing war between the staff and the new housekeeper, the ruthless new sheriff in town.

A brilliantly cast modern-day "Animal Farm," "The Senility of Vladimir P." is a coruscating political fable that shows, through an honest man slipping his ethical moorings, how Putin has not only bankrupted his nation economically, but has also diminished it culturally and spiritually. It is angry, funny, page-turning, and surprisingly moving.