Anthony Marra’s fascinating debut, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, was set in a ravaged Chechen hospital, and he expands both his scope and ambition for this intriguing collection of linked short stories spanning Russian generations. From 1930s Leningrad to 21st-century St Petersburg and, finally, “Outer Space, Year Unknown”, loosely connected characters and objects – photos, paintings, mixtapes – recur in cleverly intricate ways, in tales of Stalinist purges and “Russian Rambos”.

The Tsar of Love and Techno, then, shares much with David Mitchell’s expansive Cloud Atlas, and it wears its blend of dry humour and tragedy very well. The mixtape structure (there’s a side A, side B, and an intermission) suggests Marra enjoyed delving into this grab bag of Russian history, where a prima ballerina “labour camp luminary” can have a granddaughter who becomes Miss Siberia and marries an oligarch.

Only rarely does this structural conceit feel forced, probably because The Tsar of Love and Techno is actually more of a loose novel than a short story collection, and an impressive one at that.

The Tsar of Love and Techno is published by Vintage (£16.99). Click here to buy it for £13.93