Reddit mentions of The Queue (New York Review Books Classics)

Tolstoy's great-grandniece has a good post apocalyptic book called The Slynx.

Day of the Oprichnik and The Queue by Vladimir Sorokin are both good. The Queue is written in all dialogue though, which can be off-putting to some.

Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin is pretty damn funny.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is considered a precursor to 1984 and is worth a read.

Yuri Olesha's Envy is another funny one. Short, too.

Petersburg by Andrei Bely is generally considered the Russian Ulysses.

The Foundation Pit by Andrey Platonov is a biting look at Stalin's collectivization.

The Golovlyov Family by Shchedrin is about a family so awful they wouldn't be out of place in a Faulkner book.

Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky is my favorite of his story collections. Pretty trippy stuff.

Here's some 20th century stuff:

Moscow to the End of the Line - Venedict Erofeev. This book certainly ranks up there with Chekhov and Gogol.

Life of Insects by Vladimir Pelevin.

Queue by Vladimir Sorokin.

Absurdist Stories by by Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky.

I know you mean this as a joke, but with some interesting narrative and the right setting you could make this a very serious and involving game. You could learn about the characters around you, become endeared by their stories, even create a mystery as to what, if anything, everyone is queueing for. Here is some inspiration, both in form of Russian novels, The Concert Ticket by Olga Grushin and The Queue by Vladmir Sorokin

I always thought this type of thing would make an engaging game. Create my dream!