In 2026, NYRB Classics will publish Max Lawton’s translation of The Norm, one of the earliest novels written by Russian iconoclast Vladimir Sorokin. Though 1985’s The Queue was his first published novel, he began work on The Norm years earlier. Banned in the pre-Perestroika USSR, the full Russian text was finally published in 1994. It has never before been available in English.
NYRB Classics editor Edwin Frank writes, “The Norm is the most notorious book of a writer who has never fought shy of notoriety. In it, a whole society feeds on a substance discreetly known as the norm. Sorokin develops the theme with his usual unnerving virtuosity.”
This will be the fourth translation of Sorokin’s work by Max Lawton, following up on the success of Blue Lard, Red Pyramid: Selected Stories, and Telluria. NYRB Classics also publishes Sorokin’s Ice Trilogy in a translation by Jamey Gambrell and Sally Laird’s translation of The Queue.