The characters in this book are both humans and various kinds of insect. They have human capacities and insects' weaknesses. They go to restaurants, drive cars, dance at parties, and discuss Marcus Aurelius. But they are really moths, or mosquitoes, or cicadas, or flies. They have wings and antennae, have to feed off blood or dirt, and can be crushed or swatted to death in an instant. They are Russian bugs, and, metaphorically at least, they are trapped in the web of the great Russian arachnid, a place almost indistinguishable, it seems, from pre-Glasnost Russia.