The Last of the Vostiaks

It is a satire of bias and prejudice in academic and philological research.

The central character is a Siberian native, who has been prisoner in a Gulag and who speaks a language that has almost disappeared, one that keeps the last vestige of a vanished sound, the lateral fricative with labiovelar appendix.

A Russian student comes to understand him and wants to show him to a congress on Uralic languages in Helsinki.

However, a purist Finnish professor attempts to prevent the innocent Siberian appearance there as a living proof of the philological connection between the Finnish language and the American natives.

The plot includes a Lapp pimp, country cottages with saunas, vacation boats in the Baltic Sea, and sometimes the narration takes a rowdy tone with reminiscences of Wilt by Tom Sharpe.