'Captain of the Steppe' by Oleg Pavlov (Review)

I like Russian literature, and I'm pretty keen on small publisher And Other Stories too - it's a surprise then that it took me so long to get around to today's book.  Still, I got there in the end, so let's head off to the Kazakh steppe, to spend some time in the company of a certain army officer with a liking for potatoes.

No, really...

*****
Oleg Pavlov's Captain of the Steppe (translated by Ian Appleby, electronic review copy courtesy of the publisher) takes place in the final years of the Soviet Union, out in the vast, open wilds of the steppe.  We join Captain Ivan Yakovlevich Khabarov, a man who has somehow ended up as a lifetime soldier:

Ivan Yakovlevich Khabarov had wound up in government service neither through calculation nor through coercion; mind you, his own free will hadn't played much part either.  So they had shaved his head and taken him as a soldier, as they did everyone.  He served out his time.  But when his term as a conscript was up, they persuaded him to stay on as a sergeant major.  'Stay put, Ivan, carry on serving.  This is the right place for you.  You're not one of them civvy bastards, are you?'
(And Other Stories, 2013)

Having decided, then, to stay in the army, Khaborov rises slowly through the ranks, ending up in charge of his very own prison camp.  However, if you think that Khaborov is a success, you're sadly mistaken.  For a man of his advanced years, only having reached the rank of Captain is a bit of an embarrassment, and the camp he is in charge of, a shambles of a place in the middle of nowhere, is the ideal location to bury a man nobody really cares much for.

Still, it's his responsibility to look after the camp, and his men, a task made harder by the lack of food sent on the trucks from the main barracks.  Fearing another winter on starvation rations, Khaborov takes a brave decision, one which causes dissension in the ranks - and makes waves all the way back to headquarters...

The concept of Captain of the Steppe initially had me thinking of something along the lines of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; however, at times it's more like a Russian version of Hogan's Heroes (although the prisoners are conspicuous only by their absence...).  The soldiers are men stranded in the middle of nowhere, robbed of part of their wages, and consequently unwilling to do their duty properly.  Of course, the officers then use this as an excuse for reducing their wages further.

Trapped in the vastness of the Steppe, the reader sympathises with the soldiers - it's big, remote and depressing, and surviving on starvation rations doesn't exactly help matters.  Thus, Khabarov's simple idea, planting some of the potato rations, causes an uproar.  The men are horrified, but the captain, determined to do something to break up the tedium, stubbornly pushes through.

This is the Soviet Union though, and (inevitably) bureaucracy intervenes:

"One boring morning, dull as the reflection in a puddle of rainwater, a regimental lorry scraped along the full length of the clumsy gate and wobbled its way into the barrack square, where it stood snarling or belching, one of the two."

In its noisy belly, this lorry contains a secret service man, Skripitsyn.  He has come to tear strips off Khaborov for his temerity - how dare he think for himself?

What follows is a confused, farcical story which moves back and forth between the camp and HQ.  There's miscommunication, intrigue and betrayal (with the odd fire too) as the little Khaborov is caught in the middle of office politics, suffering as a result of other people's jealousy.  He's not the only one who suffers though:

"Suddenly, the lorry began rumbling mournfully in the steppe, scaring away the deathly hush.  It was then that the captain broke down.  It looked for all the world as though the man had reached complete collapse, and he fell prostrate.  It hit him in the side, at first; he crumpled, although without a single groan, then sank to his knees and planted himself in the ground."

Even the poor potatoes get swept up in the bad will pervading the Steppe...

The novel is an interesting look at what was happening over in the East during the Cold War - for these men, caught in the Kazakh winter, it was very cold indeed.  Over the course of the story, Khabarov develops into a minor hero, standing up to the mindless authorities, pushed to the point of breaking, but refusing to bend.  It's humour of the gallows variety, but it can be surprisingly effective (and funny).

The humour is mixed with a more serious side though, and to be honest, I'm not really sure that it always works.  I missed a consistency of tone throughout the book, and I was never quite lost in the story.  I also felt that the frequent switch of location was a little distracting (I would have preferred more from the camp and less from the petty squabbles at HQ).

Still, there's enough here to interest most readers, and this is an early Pavlov book.  And Other Stories are releasing a (loose) sequel in English later this year, The Matiushin Case, and I'll be interested to see what else Pavlov has to say about the period, and whether his later work is better.  Of course, in literature as in most areas, timing is everything - in the current political climate, Captain of the Steppe is actually acquiring even more of an edge...

'Brief Loves that Live Forever' by Andreï Makine (Review)

This year I've been lucky enough to receive lots of books for review from the wonderful MacLehose Press, many of which I've managed to get to, and some of which I... well, haven't :(  The one book I repeatedly thought about trying (and never did) came highly recommended, both by those who had tried work by the author (Andreï Makine) before and those who started with this book.  Well, as you may have guessed, I did finally get around to trying it, and you know, the old saying really is true - all good things come to he who waits ;)

*****
Brief Loves that Live Forever (translated by Geoffrey Strachan) is a beautiful little book which looks at love in a cold climate (Russia...), in particular the way that we tend to overlook our shorter moments of happiness.  Makine, through his narrator, argues that in our quest for permanent, everlasting love, we ignore the fact that a single moment of happiness can actually provide us with a lifetime of warmth, and his book takes us through several of these moments in the narrator's life.

We begin with memories of a walk through a bleak, provincial Russian city, where the narrator accompanies an acquaintance, a chronically-ill dissident, on a stroll through the windy streets.  As they stop, unexpectedly, outside a block of luxury flats, they see a beautiful, wealthy woman hurry out of an official car and into the building.  As the old man stops and stares at the woman, the narrator thinks:

"With an intensity I had never before experienced, I sensed the atrocious injustice of life, or History, or perhaps God, at all events the cruelty of this world's indifference towards a man spitting out his blood into a silk handkerchief.  A man who had never had the time to be in love."
p.21 (MacLehose Press, 2013)

The look on the elder man's face comes back to the narrator decades on and causes his mind to turn towards the past, and his own brief loves...

What follows are half-a-dozen episodes from the narrator's life, in chronological order, each describing a short moment of happiness from the past.  From the image of a beautiful crying woman encountered in his childhood, a moment which first taught him of the existence of real women, to a platonic friendship with a young woman in a drab town; from a brief, passionate summer affair by the sea (and under a political hoarding...) to a stroll through an orchard with an old friend.  Each of the moments marks an important landmark in the narrator's life, and while none of them lasted for long, all of them have made a deep impression.

It's all about now, being happy in the moment.  Striving for lasting happiness is futile, and working towards a kind of utopia (as the young narrator naively does) is foolish.  When he clumsily attempts to explain his views to one of his loves, she replies, bewildered:

"I don't understand.  All these people you want to bring happiness to in the future.  What's to stop them being happy now?  Not hating other people, not being greedy, like you said.  Not punching other people in the face, at any rate..." (p.83)

Carpe diem, indeed.  It's a very good question, and not one I can answer in a few words.  If anyone has any ideas...

What makes Brief Loves that Live Forever more than a simple tale of lost loves though is the fact that there is a parallel story running through the novel.  Makine may be telling the reader about his character's lovelife, but it's about more than that - a lot more.  Each of the stories is set against the backdrop of the political events of the time, giving us several snapshots of the Soviet society and regime.

In the first story, the young narrator sees the beautiful woman (a widow mourning her lost husband) after escaping from the 'cages' of a dismantled grandstand used for official ceremonies.  Later, forced outside by the Soviet attitude towards illicit trysts, he shelters from a storm with his summer lover - under a giant hoarding showing the frowning face of Brezhnev.  His final tale takes place in a gigantic orchard, a symbol of Communist might and planning, a mass of trees which takes four hours to walk through...

However, the regime which was meant to last forever is shown to be sluggish and unmoving, doomed to disappear.  Near the beginning of the novel, the writer talks of the symbolism of propaganda:

"Yes, existential tranquillisers, meta-physical antidepressants." (p.27)

However, as shown by the brief stay in cardboard Brezhnev's shadow, it doesn't always work.  The gigantic message across the roof of a factory complex, a symbol of eternal socialism, has crumbled into dust by the time the narrator returns to visit his friend, vanished into oblivion.  And the apple orchard?  Useless, sterile.  No bee will fly five miles to pollinate a tree...

Wait - there's more...  What really makes the book worth reading is the writing, a beautiful prose style wonderfully rendered into English by Strachan, which flows effortlessly along.  It's simple, but elegant, a joy to read, and it all makes for a book to enjoy in pieces - slowly, if possible:

"Even more than the bittersweet interrupted continuity of our brief separation, however, what intoxicates me is the floating lightness of it, the weightlessness of a misty May morning, the softly tinted transparency of the first still pale foliage." (p.118)

It's the kind of writing I enjoy, and there's a lot more of this in the novel.

I've already seen a couple of mentions of Makine's book in the various end-of-year lists, and it's very possible that it might appear on mine (although I am having a good December...).  Watch out for this one when IFFP time rolls around next year as there's a fair chance that it could make the longlist (always presuming that it's been submitted...).  The moral of the story?  Nothing lasts forever, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - enjoy the moments while you can...

...oh, and (of course) check your shelves for old books which you keep meaning to read ;)

'The Light and The Dark' by Mikhail Shishkin (Review)

After reading (and loving) Maidenhair a while back, I was keen to try more of Mikhail Shishkin's work, hoping that another book would appear in English.  I was pleasantly surprised then when the kind people at MacLehose (well, Quercus, actually) sent me a review copy of another of his novels, his most recent translation into English.  In some ways it's a very similar book to Maidenhair - however, in others it's very different...

*****
The Light and the Dark (translated by Andrew Bromfield) is an epistolary novel (written in letters) between Sasha and Volodenka, a pair of young lovers who have been parted.  As Sasha talks about everyday life and reminisces about her childhood, Volodenka writes about his experiences in the army, on the march to China to help crush the Boxer Rebellion.  The Boxer Rebellion?  That happened at the turn of the twentieth century - hang on a minute...

That's right.  You see, unlike Australia Post (who can struggle to locate a sturdy letter box with a large number painted on it) the Russian postal service seems to be able to work in four dimensions.  Sasha appears to be living in modern times, and moves further on in life as each letter goes by.  On the other hand, Volodenka's side of the story takes place over a matter of hot, sticky, blood-drenched months.  Is there any hope for two people separated by space and time?  Well, I'm sure love will find a way ;)

Anyone expecting a story reminiscent of the Hollywood movie The Lake House is barking up the wrong tree though, and those who have already experienced Shishkin's work, in the form of Maidenhair, will have guessed that there is a lot more to The Light and The Dark than a cheesy tale of star-crossed lovers.  In fact, the two writers barely acknowledge each other's letters, leading us to suspect that their missives aren't really reaching their destination after all.  If we attempt to make sense of the story, it would be tempting to surmise that perhaps Sasha is pining after a lost love, a soldier who died long ago...

...but the plot, as you may already have suspected, is of little consequence here.  The story is merely a canvas upon which Shishkin can sketch out his theories on time and relationships.  It's a book of childhood memories and stories of the past in which the two protagonists open up about their formative years.  Both Sasha and Volodenka have a lot to say about their relationships with their parents and the effect that marriage break-ups had on their childhood.  However, a more prominent theme is a circular return to their parents, this time in the role of carers, later in life.  For Shishkin, dealing with death is an important part of life:

"It's very important for people when their dear ones leave them.  That's a gift too.  It's the only way they can understand anything about life.  The death of the people we love, people dear to us, is a gift that can help us understand the important reason why we are here."
p.243 (Quercus Books, 2013)

It's a lesson Sasha and Volodenka are to learn in different ways.

As much as the book talks about death though, the two main characters also grow to understand the importance of embracing life.  Caught in the middle of a horrific conflict, Volodenka discovers the joy of life and a desperate wish not to die.  What he is yet to realise (and what Sasha discovers over the course of the novel) is that it is your body which drags you down, pulling you closer to death:

"Do you know what made me feel afraid the first time?  When I was fourteen or fifteen - it was a realisation that suddenly hit me: My body is dragging me into the grave.  Every day, every moment.  Every time I breathe in and breathe out.
Isn't that alone already a good enough reason to hate it?" (p.183)

But then, the body is also used to enjoy life - as we see in other parts of the book...

Just as in Maidenhair, the writer uses his characters to discuss the nature of time, refuting the idea of linear progress.  One metaphor used is that of a book already written, meaning that life is little more than acting out what has already been put down in black and white.  However, other people may read those lines at different times, causing those caught in the action to experience a feeling of déjà vu (no, me neither...).  In any case, physical objects like coins or letters link everything together, present, future and past connected to a vanishing point in time...

I enjoyed The Light and The Dark, but I'd have to say that it's not as awe-inspiring as Maidenhair.  It took me a while to get into the book, especially as the first letters seemed to make up little more than a he-said, she-said work.  At one point, I found myself agreeing with Sasha:

"I'm lying here contemplating my own navel.
 What a wonderful occupation!" (p.52)

While it was all well written and interesting, over the first half of the book I didn't feel too inspired to rush back after finishing a section.  In a sense, the lack of a strong plot and the episodic nature of the structure meant that I was treating it more like a collection of short stories than a novel...  Eventually though, The Light and The Dark did win me over, especially as the two lovers drifted further apart.  The further you advance into Shishkin's deceptively-light prose, the more you understand what he is trying to do. 

Genius or merely a good writer?  I'm not quite convinced yet that Shishkin is the next-big-thing he's been touted as.  Which is not to say that he's a one-hit wonder, quite the contrary; this is definitely a writer you'll hear more of in the future.  If you haven't already, perhaps it's time to get on board the bandwagon :)

*****
P.S. For anyone interested in sampling some of Shishkin's other work, Dwight, of A Common Reader, shared some links to online stories in the course of his posts on a Shishkin podcast.  In the Q&A session held at San Francisco's Center for the Art of Translation, Scott Esposito chatted to Shishkin and the American translator of Maidenhair, Marian Schwartz.  Anyone interested in Shishkin's work should check out the interview - and read the stories, of course ;)

'The Queen of Spades' by Alexander Pushkin (Review)

Considering that Pushkin Press is named after the famous Russian poet, it was a surprise to find that none of his work was in their back catalogue.  Thankfully, this embarrassing oversight has now been rectified, in the form of the wonderful little book you can see in the photo - and about time too ;)

*****
Alexander Pushkin's The Queen of Spades (translated by Anthony Briggs, review copy courtesy of the publisher) comprises a variety of works from the writer's career.  Although primarily known as a poet, he did write some prose, and his most famous story lends its name to this collection.  In addition to 'The Queen of Spades' and 'The Stationmaster' (a shorter story), the reader is also treated to extracts from some of Pushkin's more famous longer works (e.g. Yevgeny Onegin).  Finally, there is a selection of his shorter poems, not forgetting another of his masterpieces 'The Bronze Horseman'  - truly something for everyone :)

'The Queen of Spades' itself is a longish short story set in St. Petersburg.  It tells of an officer who hears a story about a countess who knows the secret of successful gambling.  He decides to get the secret from her, by fair means or foul, faking an attachment with the countess' young ward in order to get closer to the old lady.  Eventually, he does learn the secret - but can he really trust the mischievous old woman?

It is an excellent story, written in a light, airy manner, despite the supernatural elements which creep into the second half of the tale.  Pushkin's observant poet's eye is evident in his descriptions of the characters, including a few lines about the old countess in society:

"She was a full participant in all high-society frivolities, taking herself off to every ball, where she sat things out in a corner, rouged up and dressed in the fashions of yesteryear, like a hideous but indispensable ballroom ornament."
p.27, 'The Queen of Spades' (2012, Pushkin Press)

This casual and humorous style contrasts nicely with the darker turn the story eventually takes.

However, Pushkin is far more famous for his poetry, and this is where the main interest of the collection lies.  One of the most famous poems in Russian (and one, I suspect, that many people memorise at school) is 'The Bronze Horseman', a twenty-page ode to St. Petersburg.  The poem starts with the story of the city's founding in the Finnish swamps and goes on to describe the city's beauties.  Then we are told of a (real-life) flood, one which devastates parts of the city - and has a dramatic effect on the life of Yevgeny, a poor working man.

Poor Yevgeny survives the floods himself, but some of his loved ones are not quite so lucky, so our friend decides to vent his anger on the founder of the city - in the shape of the statue of the bronze horseman.  As it turns out though, the Tsars are not to be trifled with, even when they are cast in bronze:

"And splendid in the pale moonlight,
One arm flung out on high, full speed,
Comes the Bronze Horseman in his flight,
Upon his crashing, clanging steed."
p.107, 'The Bronze Horseman'

Run, Yevgeny, run!

To round off the collection, there are ten or so shorter poems, representative of the hundreds Pushkin wrote.  They read elegantly and smoothly - at which point it is probably time to praise Briggs and his excellent translation.  In addition to writing an interesting introduction (and supplying occasional footnotes), the translator has managed to create a collection of different forms and styles without sounding artificial.  I have no knowledge of Russian, but poetry is notoriously tricky to coax into a foreign language; my enjoyment of the English versions must surely reflect on the translator's skill.

One example of this is 'Winter Evening', a short poem about an old woman sitting inside her cottage while the cold wind howls outside.  If we take just the first stanza, we can see the work Briggs has put into his translation:

"Darkness falling, stormy roaring,
Whipping Winds and scurrying snow.
Baying beasts are howling for me,
Babies wailing - blow, winds, blow!
Through the tattered rooftops, flapping,
Rustling through the threadbare thatch,
Like a late-night traveller tapping,
Rattling at the window latch."
p.128, 'Winter Evening'

It is clear from this stanza that Briggs is attempting to keep the alliteration and rhythm of the original ('whipping winds', 'baying beasts', 'threadbare thatch'), and this comes though very well in the fourth line, where the b/w/b/w/b pattern can't have been easy to create!

All in all, this is an excellent little collection and probably the perfect entry point into Pushkin for the average reader who isn't really that into poetry.  The variety of genres means that you can pick and choose, or you can simply dip into it as you feel the urge.  Another great Pushkin Press publication - even if it did take them more than a decade to get around to commissioning it ;)

'Maidenhair' by Mikhail Shishkin (Review)

Anyone who reads Russian literature in English will have noticed that there is, shall we say, a slight obsession with the classics.  For every new translation, there are a couple of dozen updated versions of novels from the Golden and Silver ages of the country's literary past.  However, there is good new stuff out there too: I enjoyed Oleg Zaionchkovsky's Happiness is Possible when I read it last year, and today's offering is another contemporary book which came with a lot of hype.  Let's see if it lived up to it...

*****
Mikhail Shishkin's Maidenhair (translated by Marian Schwartz, review copy courtesy of Open Letter Books) has been touted as an instant classic.  The five-hundred page novel starts off in Switzerland as a story about an interpreter for Russian refugees, a man who must listen to the stories of atrocities they spin in an attempt to prolong their stay in the country.

Very soon though any idea of a straight narrative is abandoned.  Shishkin creates a tangle of intermingled strands, zipping backwards and forwards in time and space, alternating between fiction and reality (whatever that is).  As well as following the unnamed interpreter in his work (and on his travels), the reader must navigate the books the interpreter is reading, the postcards he writes (but never sends) to his son, and the diary entries of a famous singer and actress whose biography he was once commissioned to write.

It is an overwhelming confusion of genres, styles and stories, the parts coming together to create a whole which is extremely difficult to understand fully, but wonderful to read.  A book which came to mind while reading Maidenhair was Cloud Atlas, another ambitious novel which plays with genres, meta-fiction and text types.   Shishkin, obviously, is indebted to his Russian influences, and mentions of Gogol, Pushkin, Turgenev and Tolstoy are scattered across the pages of the novel.  However, there is a lot here that is Joycean too, with drifting stream-of-consciousness passages bumping shoulders with black humour and language straight from the gutter.  Hmm - I'm not sure I'm making myself very clear here...

At the risk of falling into the trap of comparing my current book with another recent read, Maidenhair again seems to be a novel which attempts to discuss just about everything.  It is a work about war and peace, about love and (above all) about stories.  One of the main ideas seems to be whether it is possible to be happy while others suffer, whether we can smile and dance while others are slaughtered in unnecessary wars:

"It's like with happiness.  Since everyone can't be happy anyway, whoever can be happy right now, should.  You have to be happy today, right now, no matter what.  Someone said there can't be a heaven if there's a hell.  Supposedly it's impossible to be in heaven if you know suffering exists somewhere.  Nonsense.  True enjoyment of life can only be felt if you've known suffering.  What would the leftovers of our soup be to this mongrel if it hadn't had a whiff of hunger?"
p.474 (2012, Open Letter Books)

The privileged, comfortable reader may well feel a few pangs of guilt at being able to settle back in a soft reading chair while Chechens flee the Russian army - the quotation above shows that not everyone feels the need to worry about justice and fairness...

Another focus is Shishkin's proposal that life is lived in four dimensions.  Everywhere we go, we leave traces of ourselves, meaning that we are everywhere we have ever been (or will ever be).  This means too that the ghosts of yesterday are still here today, all the people we have ever known existing at the same time and in the same space.  In fact, some of these people and things are merely copies of earlier beings - life is full of imitations of imitations with no original.  As we see from the statues the interpreter visits in Rome, or the actress Bellochka's constant stream of boyfriends (each one seeming to be 'the one'), everything repeats, nothing is new...

...at least I think that is what he is getting at.  With all the constant jumping around between realities, it can be hard to keep tabs on what is actually being said.  Not that this is necessarily a problem.  Even if all our lives are inextricably interconnected, there is no need to get to grips with every single thread:

 "You just have to understand destiny's language and its cooing.  We're blind from birth.  We don't see anything and don't pick up on the connection between events, the oneness of things, like a mole digging its tunnel and bumping into thick roots, and for the mole these are just insurmountable obstacles and he can't imagine the crown these roots nourish." p.268

Moles, yep, we are all moles.  Let's move on.

As you may have gathered from the ramblings above, Maidenhair is not exactly a comfort read.  In fact, it is a book which makes the reader work hard for their enjoyment on many levels, whether that involves keeping track of who is narrating which section or having to flick to Wikipedia to look up historical, literary and mythological figures name-checked in the novel.  If that all seems like too much hard work though, you can just appreciate it as a set of interconnected stories and enjoy the language (and with Marian Schwartz's excellent translation, that makes for very good reading indeed).  In the end, it is all about the stories...

Many reviews of Maidenhair have been rather effusive, and the 'instant classic' tag has been thrown around a fair bit.  On a first read, I'm not sure I can make a judgement like that, but it is a very good book, and one which I'm convinced will be just as successful in its translated form as it was in the original.  One thing is for sure - it is a novel which will stand up to rereading, and one which will reward the reader who is prepared to put in the time and effort.  If that sounds like you...

'War and Peace' by Leo Tolstoy (Review)

After flying through a whole pile of short translated fiction recently, I was left with a lot of reviews to write - meaning that I needed a book which would give me time to catch up with my blogging duties.  Hmm, a big novel that I've been meaning to reread for some time...  I think I might just have the right book for the job ;)

*****
Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (translated by Rosemary Edmonds) is, by any definition, a big book.   It is a great novel about a great war, at the time one of the biggest and most destructive ever.  The novel starts in 1805, and the first book (125 pages) introduces the reader to our dramatis personae.  The second book then takes us through their experiences at and during the Battle of Austerlitz - and that's just the start.  We then follow our characters through the the years of an uneasy cold war until Napoleon attacks Russia in 1812, which is when the story really begins.  Finally, Tolstoy adds an epilogue of seven years to tell us how our friends fared after the defeat of the French - plus some philosophical musings to finish it all off.

As I said, it is a big book ;)

War and Peace is an epic, and its scope allows us to follow Tolstoy's creations across a decade as they grow up, grow old and (in some cases) change.  We see Natasha Rostov as a sprightly girl, then as a beautiful young debutante.  Later she matures, learning from mistakes and hardened by the necessities of the war, finally achieving motherhood in the epilogue.  Another of the major characters, Pierre Bezuhov, appears on the stage as a plump, naive buffoon, but the war gives him the opportunity for him to show his true colours; by the end of the novel, he is a familiar, middle-aged friend.

Although the characters change in many ways, just as in real life, they only change within the constraints of their personalities.  Those who turn out to be disappointing people have the germ of this disappointment in them from the very start.  The writer merely allows time to bring out what is initially partially hidden.  Boris' snobbery, Sonya's sanctimoniousness, Petya's impetuosity - they are all there at the start of the novel for any reader to see.

But what is War and Peace actually about?  The answer is that it is a book about everything (which is, perhaps, why it is so long...).  Tolstoy, through his characters, ponders the big question of the meaning of life, and he uses his 1400+ pages to explore various answers.  Pierre and Prince Andrei wonder if it is about work or personal development; Maria tries education and the care of others; Boris works for his own gain, while Dolohov merely has fun wherever he can find it; Petya longs for glory, but his sister, Natasha, is aching for love.  Somehow though, nobody seems to be able to find the right answer.

Pierre is especially troubled by existential matters (when not overcome by marriage problems) and spends years looking for a reason to live.  At one point, he muses:

"Sometimes he remembered having heard how soldiers under fire in the trenches, and having nothing to do, try hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger.  And it seemed to Pierre that all men were like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in playthings, some in horses, some in politics, some in sport, some in wine, and some in government service. 'Nothing is without consequence, and nothing is important: it's all the same in the end.  The thing to do is to save myself from it all as best I can,' thought Pierre.  'Not to see it, that terrible it.'
p.636 (Penguin Classics, 1982)

You will have to read the book to find out how (or whether) Pierre is ever able to find what he is looking for...

Much of what I have said so far applies more to the 'peace' side of the book, but large parts of the novel are (of course) devoted to the war.  Tolstoy paints a masterful picture of the conflict, ranging from the delusions of the commanders looking down from the heights of their posts to the experiences of the peasant soldiers on the ground.  While there is no doubt that we are on the Russian side (constant mentions of 'our line' and 'our troops' ensure we never forget who we want to win), there is no hint of jingoism or revisionist reporting - the writer is as critical of his own side as he is of the enemy.  He describes how the majority of senior officers are only interested in their own affairs, seeking to discredit rivals and ensure their own advancement.

Despite the multitude of Generals, Tolstoy believes that things happen the way they do for a reason - and that military commanders have very little to do with how wars unfold.  Despite the appeal of the 'Great Man' theory, the impossibility of free will and control means that the soldiers fighting hand-to-hand (or running away...) have more influence on the course of a battle than any command Napoleon might give.  In the chaos of war, letting things run their course is the only way to go...

...and this is exactly the way another of Tolstoy's major characters (a real-life one) handles affairs.  General (later Prince) Kutuzov, the man who saved the Russian army from annihilation after Austerlitz, is recalled in his country's hour of need - but he is not exactly the epitome of a knight in shining armour.  He is an old man, in need of sleep and a good meal, and he is unwilling to rush things in the way his advisers would like him to.

However, it is this reliance on 'patience and time' that eventually brings success.  The General allows events to happen as they should and prevents people from doing stupid things for no reason - which is perhaps the best thing a commander can do.  In part then, War and Peace is just as much a demand for the reappraisal of the actions of the much-maligned Kutuzov as it is a novel.

One more thing that War and Peace is known for though is the second half of the epilogue, forty-odd pages of metaphysical ramblings that sum up the ideas Tolstoy has just spent 1400 pages setting out.  In that sense, it is akin to putting up a ten-foot barbed-wire fence on the home straight of a marathon race, expecting the reader to increase their mental efforts just when they were hoping for a nice, easy jog to the finishing line.

It is important though because this is where Tolstoy tells you what it is all about ('it' being everything, of course).  I won't claim to have understood it all, but the main focus is on the idea of free will versus necessity, and you begin to get a sneaking suspicion that Tolstoy's answer to all of his questions happens to be God.  Which is great if you are a Christian.  If you are not, it is a bit like reading a murder novel and then finding out that the killer is never revealed...

I will let Tolstoy finish this off for himself though, as after all that writing, he probably does it better than I could.  The very last sentence of the novel reads:

"In the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist and to recognise a dependence of which we are not personally conscious." p.1444

My last sentence?  War and Peace is actually a very readable and enjoyable novel - don't let my review put you off ;)

Who Let The Dogs Out?

Anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis will have noticed that there has been an (unintentional) focus on animals recently.  There was a book about a rather clever Soviet guard dog, a magical tale about a colourful fox in the Icelandic snow, and - of course - a delightful story about travels with a long-eared companion.  So, today's offering, unusual as it is, should just be seen as a continuation of this trend :)

*****
Five Russian Dog Stories (review copy from Hesperus Press) is... well, what do you think it is?  For linguistic pedants, let me assure you that (with one exception) both the stories and the dogs are Russian.  Anthony Briggs, a notable Russian-to-English translator (amongst other things, he has tackled War and Peace...), is the man responsible for this collection, selecting, translating and commenting on the stories in an excellent introduction.

The stories in question, while chosen primarily for their dogginess, are all by accomplished Russian writers, and the first of them, Ivan Turgenev's Mumu, is a famous story in its own right.  Mumu is the tale of a gigantic, deaf-mute serf, Gerasim, who is thwarted in his hope of marrying a fellow servant.  While walking one day, he rescues a dog from drowning in a river, and gradually becomes attached to the little black-and-white Spaniel.  Sadly for owner and dog, Gerasim's own mistress soon puts up an obstacle to the unlikely pair's happy existence...

Another writer you'll undoubtedly have heard of is Anton Chekhov, and while Chestnut Girl may not be one of his more famous stories, anything coming from the pen of the short-story specialist is bound to be good.  In this story, a chestnut Spaniel gets separated from her drunken, boorish master and ends up finding a new home with a much kinder man - and his menagerie of talented animals.  With a new name (and a new bag of tricks), our canine friend is ready to start a new life; however, what will happen when she is reminded of the past?

The title of Mikhail Saltykov's Good Old Trezor is intended to evoke memories of a book I read recently, Faithful Ruslan (also called Good Old Ruslan).  However, where Ruslan's tale is a lengthy, heart-breaking one, Saltykov's story is a humorous, ten-page romp detailing the life of a hard-working guard dog.  It's a dog's life alright, but Trezor seems to accept that this is his lot in life, and that there's no point in complaining.  After all, he is a dog.

The two stories making up the quintet are Arthur the White Poodle by Alexander Kuprin and Ich Bin from Head to Foot by satirists Ilf and Petrov.  Kuprin's story is probably the weakest of the bunch, a children's tale about a quest to get back a kidnapped dog, but Ilf and Petrov's clever parody of a poor German circus performer being retrained in a Socialist model is well worth a read :)

*****
As mentioned above, this is definitely Briggs' show, and he has done a fine job.  The translations are easy to read, albeit more faithful to the original in terms of language than some would like (especially those who prefer modern language to finding English expressions from the equivalent time period).  In addition to the stories, there are also some bonus poems slotted between the main acts, most running for a just a few lines, each on the topic of you-know-what ;)

The biggest sign that this is a labour of love though is Briggs' introduction, in which he gives a brief summary of each of the stories (and puts it in its literary and historical context), as well as talking about dogs in literature more generally.  His claims that Russian literature is especially rich in dog-related stories would seem to stand up on the basis of these stories; my only criticism of the collection is that it would have been nice to have a few more of them included in its pages...

Still, it's a lovely idea and one well worth a look, whether you're a big fan of dogs or not.  Indeed, the inside sleeve makes the claim that Five Russian Dog Stories is a "...delight for dog-lovers, with a passing interest for dog-haters...".  As a reader who falls somewhere between the two camps, I can heartily recommend it.

Of course, I'm sure there many of you out there who are much more interested in dogs than I am.  As Briggs says, humans and dogs have been companions for thousands of years, and the two species share a special bond.  An anecdote the translator gives at the start of his introduction puts this nicely into perspective.  One day, he and a friend visited an old pub in England and asked the landlord whether he would let the dogs into his establishment.  His response?

"Sir, I prefer dogs." p.vii

To which I can only say "woof" ;)

It's A Dog's Life...

For a good while now, I've had a copy of Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich sitting on my shelves, waiting for me to get around to finding the time for it, and after finishing my latest book, that time may come around sooner rather than later.  You see, Georgi Vladimov's Faithful Ruslan (translated by Michael Glenny, PDF review copy courtesy of Melville House Books), a wonderful few hours of reading, is set in a similar setting and time to Solzhenitsyn's work.  The central character, however, couldn't be more different...

*****
The star of Faithful Ruslan is Ruslan himself, a guard dog in one of the infamous Russian gulags, or labour camps, in Siberia.  When the camp is emptied (possibly because of a change in the political wind), the soldier in charge of putting the highly-trained guard dogs down decides instead to turn them loose.  As a result, Ruslan finds himself alone, a soldier with an honourable discharge, left to roam the streets of the town near the camp.

While the rest of the dogs soon adapt to living with families, putting up with petting and accepting scraps from passers-by, Ruslan is too attached to 'the Service' for that.  After being humiliated and rejected by his former master, Ruslan decides to keep up his duties, patrolling the train station where he believes the next batch of prisoners will be brought and temporarily living with a former prisoner - not as a pet, but as a guard, to ensure the man doesn't try to escape.

Too proud to go against his training and accept food from civilians, Ruslan learns to hunt, enjoying his time stalking animals in the nearby woods.  He never forgets his duty though, and this is rewarded when one day the train does come back.  Unfortunately for our four-legged friend, times have changed, and people no longer need a guard dog...

Using a dog as the central character of a political satire could backfire, or at least stumble into harmless humour, but Vladimov's decision to tell the story through Ruslan's eyes is a justified one.  While Ruslan talks our language and understands a lot more than we would expect, he also thinks very differently - and has very strong views on humans:

"Ruslan knew well that humans differed from one another in character as much as dogs did.  That was why each person smelled differently; you only had to take one sniff and there was no doubt about their character.  His master, for instance, was perhaps not particularly brave, but in compensation, he was totally without pity; he was not, perhaps, overly clever, but on the other hand he never trusted anyone; his friends, perhaps, were not all that fond of him, but he made up for that by being quite prepared to shoot any one of them if the Service should ever require it of him." p.41 (Melville House, 2011)

He continues his psychological studies when he moves on from his military master.  His new relationship with the ex-prisoner (the Shabby Man) is a very unequal one where the dog is very much the superior.  He accompanies his charge to his work of scavenging wood to make a cabinet and ponders the unusual rituals which occur each evening:

"Ruslan already knew that the horrible stuff in that bottle was nicknamed "vodka" (it also had a longer name: "Filthy-stuff-damn-the-man-who-invented-it"), and he could never make up his mind whether the Shabby Man really liked it or not.  In the evenings he yearned for it with all his heart, but by morning it made him feel terrible and he hated it." p.89

Beyond the humour though, Ruslan's tale is a very sad one.  Unlike the other dogs, he is unable to adapt to life outside the camp, clinging to his beliefs too tightly to enable him to come to terms with the new world order.  He firmly believes that the prisoners were better off where they were, behind barbed wire, and never gives up hope that they will one day see the error of their ways and come back to the camp of their own free will.

At one point, as he inspects the old site of the camp, where new buildings are rising from the ground (he believes that a new, better camp is being built...), Ruslan notices the lack of barbed wire and, for a brief moment, considers the possibility of a camp without wires, the whole world as one big, happy prison camp...

"He sadly decided, however, that it wouldn't work.  Everyone would wander away where he pleased and the guards could never keep track of them all.  It would be impossible to give every person his own guard dog.  There were an awful lot of people and not enough dogs..." p.177

Of course, there is a lot more to Faithful Ruslan than simply the tale of an unemployed dog.  Ruslan is the symbol of a regime, a representation of blind belief and trust in what Moscow deemed right.  In a daring move, Vladimov put the mindset of a political generation (or, at least, some of its military representatives) into the sleek, furry body of a dog, using his story to show how blind faith in outmoded ideologies will lead to self-destruction.  It's unsurprising that only underground copies of the novel were available in the Soviet Union...

Faithful Ruslan is a wonderful book, one I couldn't wait to get back to each time I had to leave it (or when my Kindle battery started to die...).  Despite Ruslan's deluded nature and his inability to bend with the wind, you can't help feeling for him.  He's a soldier, a faithful friend, a bad enemy - and a bit of a philosopher on the side :)

Sadly for dog lovers, Ruslan is always doomed to an unhappy ending.  A supreme patriot, one who truly believes in the regime which has been left behind, in some ways he is less a dog than a dinosaur.  Eventually, he comes to realise that while a few guards can often contain large numbers of prisoners, one day they will realise that their strength lies in numbers, and that is the day when they will finally take their freedom.

After all, every dog has his day...

The Colours of Chaos

Anyone interested in Russian literature will know that it is all too easy to be distracted by those two giants of the country's literary Golden Age, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky (or Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, depending on your views...), writers who overshadow their countymen to such an extent that generations of great writers struggle to receive the recognition they deserve outside their home country.

One such writer is Andrei Bely, an author I'd never heard of until I saw his novel Petersburg advertised on the web-site of indie publisher Pushkin Press.  I was intrigued by the blurbs, including a quote from Nabokov declaring Petersburg as "One of the four most important works of twentieth-century literature", and was lucky enough to obtain a review copy to find out for myself how good it was.  I certainly didn't regret it...

*****

Petersburg (translated by John Elsworth) is set in the famous Russian city of the title during the autumn of 1905, just prior to the culmination of the 1905 revolution.  Elderly statesman Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov (how I've missed reading Russian names!) shuttles between his enormous, cold, empty house and his slightly-less frigid workplace, where he creates messages to be sent out to the far-flung corners of the empire.  Meanwhile, his son, Nikolai Apollonovich, spends his days avoiding his university studies, lounging around reading Kant and paying visits to a beautiful married woman.

Ableukhov's wife, Anna Petrovna, left him two-and-a-half years ago, and the two men, father and son, are attempting to fill the void in their lives.  However, while the elder Ableukhov is attempting to keep the barbarians at bay, struggling to douse the growing signs of civil unrest, Nikolai has taken a very different path.  In a chance meeting with certain unhappy souls, he has made a promise - a promise which he regrets, but which circumstances will compel him to keep...

The family relationships of the Ableukhovs, father, son and (later in the book) mother form one of the basic themes of the book, and considering the time the book was written, it is hardly surprising that their relationship is handled in Freudian terms.  Of course, when the pivotal occurrence of the novel is the possibility of the son planting a bomb in his father's bedroom, the words Oedipus complex do seem to scream out at the reader ;)  Bely gives us detailed descriptions of the two male Ableukhovs, in some ways very different, but in others so similar - in fact, at times the writer plays with their appearance making the son age into the father and the father turn back into the son.

The psychology in Petersburg isn't limited to this family rivalry though.  Each of the main characters seem afflicted with some sort of mental disorder, one exacerbated by the pressure-cooker environment of the Imperial Russian capital.  Apollon Apollonovich suffers from agoraphobia, his missives to the provinces a misguided attempt to tame the wilderness he fears; Alexandr Ivanovich, Nikolai's contact to the revolutionaries, is driven mad by confinement in his small, squalid apartment; Sergei Sergeich Likhutin, a solid young soldier, loses his mind because of his wife's continued dalliance with Nikolai Apollonovich.  And outside, the crowds grow, the strikes begin to increase in number, and everyone feels that something important is coming:

"There was a rush of wind from the sea: the last leaves fluttered down; there would be no more leaves till May; how many people would be there no more in May?  These fallen leaves were truly the last leaves.  Alexandr Ivanovich knew it all by heart: there would be bloody days, full of horror; and then - everything would collapse; so swirl then, whirl around, you last, incomparable days!
  So swirl then, whirl in the air, you last of the leaves!  Another idle thought...". p.338 (Pushkin Press, 2012)

At times, the distancing effect of Bely's language makes the characters slightly unreal, but that is of little importance because the real star of the show is the city itself.  Petersburg is a city that shouldn't exist, a metropolis raised from the marshes by Imperial edict, permeated by the tainted swamps it is built upon.  There is a formidable bureaucracy which attempts to bring the unruly landscape to heel; Apollon Apollonovich dreams of creating a landscape with roads criss-crossing throughout the empire...

"And exactly the same houses still rose up there, and the same grey streams of people passed by; and the same yellow-green mist hung there; faces ran past deep in concentration; the pavements shuffled and whispered - under the horde of giant houses; towards them flew - Prospect upon Prospect; and the spherical surface of the planet seemed to be entwined, as though by the rings of a snake, by the grey-black cubes of houses; and the network of parallel Prospects, intersected by another network of Prospects, spread into the abysses of the universe with its surfaces of squares and cubes: one square per man-in-the-street." p.533

However, the attempts of the civil servants to tame nature are doomed to failure.  As man seeks to dictate terms to the vast open spaces, slowly the flow is reversed, and now it is nature which is slowly encircling the isolated capital...

These ideas work so well because of the writer's inventive use of language.  Petersburg is less plot- than language-driven, each word carefully weighed (and equally carefully translated), each having a specific purpose.  One of the themes running through the novel is colour, with Bely saturating his text with a plethora of shades and hues.  Green appears to be used for decay and pestilence, with the phosphorescence rolling in over the Neva a sign of unavoidable sickness.  Red appears frequently in its usual guise of danger, with Nikolai's costume and the beguiling Sofia Petrovna's lipstick proving to be signs of caution that are more often ignored than heeded.  Yellow is associated with sickness and madness, the best example of this being the face Alexandr Ivanovich sees each night on the wall of his bedroom...

A second common linguistic trick is Bely's liking for repetition, both within paragraphs and throughout the text.  The attentive reader will frequently find sentences used earlier in the novel in a different context, often in describing a different character, linking the various parts of the story together.  However, it is the close repetition which is more striking, as in the following example:

"Those were strange, misty days; venomous October was passing with its freezing tread; frozen dust blew around the city in drab-brown vortices; and the golden whisper of foliage lay down submissively on the paths of the Summer Garden, and the rustling purple lay down submissively at people's feet, to wind and chase at the feet of a passing pedestrian, and to murmur as it wove from leaves a red-and-yellow web of words; that sweet chirruping of blue tits that all August had bathed in waves of foliage had long since ceased to bathe in foliage: and the Summer Garden blue tit herself was now hopping forlornly in the black network of boughs, along the bronze railing and across the roof of Peter's house." p.102

When you add to this the fact that the opening comment ("Those were strange, misty days") has already appeared several times over the past couple of pages, it gives you a good impression of how the book actually reads.

*****
Looking back at what I've written, I realise that I haven't really said much about what actually happens in the novel, but to be honest that's beside the point - Petersburg is about how things happen and how the protagonists feel while it happens.  There are large traces of Dostoyevsky in the handling of the novel, but it definitely has a later feel to it, more of a Henry James feel than a Russian one at times.  Despite this though, there is a plot, and with knowledge of the revolutions which are about to shatter Russian society (some of which had yet to occur at the time Bely first wrote the book), we can see how the writer has examined the seeds of these later events.

Petersburg is a book which is beyond analysing in a mere blog post; there are just too many angles you could pursue (Marxism, Post-Colonialism, Stylistics, Eco-Fiction...).  While it's not a book that everyone will enjoy, I loved it, and I was very impressed with John Elsworth's Rossica-Prize-winning translation, one that must have been a touch trickier than the average job.  This is a novel that will bear reading time and time again.  I can't really give it greater praise than that :)

Is Everybody Happy?

It seems that I just can't get away from translated fiction these days.  Not content to plough through the longlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, I have also been taking a look at some newer appearances on the market, and today's offering is a new story from an old friend.  I have already reviewed several books from the wonderful And Other Stories stable, and today they are taking us to Russia for a brief look at life in modern Moscow.  I do hope you like Vodka...

*****
Oleg Zaionchkovsky's Happiness is Possible* (translated by Andrew Bromfield) is a collection of short reflections on contemporary Russian life, told by an unnamed writer, presumably an alter-ego of Zaionchkovsky himself.  Our friend lives in a small flat in the Russian capital, reflecting on the nature of his adopted hometown, mostly failing to get any writing done and constantly negotiating with his dog, Phil, as to the frequency and direction of their walks.  The writer gradually tells us more about his life, including his mediocre career, his visits to his hometown (just outside Moscow) and his complex relationship with ex-wife Tamara (or Toma).  The more we learn about the man and his dog, the more we are able to reflect on the statement the writer gives us to consider: is happiness possible?

While the main idea running through the book is the writer's personal life, it is contrasted with another important concept, the city of Moscow itself.  In fact, Happiness is Possible is just as much a portrait of modern life in the Russian metropolis as it is a personal journal.  As the writer says:

"If we acknowledge that a city is a living organism, we must acknowledge its place in creation.  And in so doing, we shall be obliged to cede our priority and accept that it is not we human beings who are the crown of creation, but the city."

This is exactly the view he takes, placing Moscow at the heart of the novel and describing the efforts of the ant-like people living there to adjust to - and cope with - life in the big city.  His creations (and they are often creations of both Zaionchkovsky and his narrator) struggle to make a foothold for themselves in the capital, with both residential permits and love in short supply.

Zaionchkovsky's style is laid-back and informal, the prose soaked in a dry humour which takes a while to get used to, but which suits the meandering style of the book.  In a way it reminded me of the classic Victorian novel Three Men in a Boat, both for the inclusion of the dog and for the laid-back, idling lifestyle the writer describes.  When our friend spends a day at his dacha (small country house), he writes:

"The day passes in the way that a summer day at the dacha should: in glorious idleness.  So that it will be remembered for nothing but this state of drowsy, delightful drifting."

You can almost imagine the gentle ripple of the Thames, and ducks sailing serenely past in the background...

However, Happiness is Possible is more similar to another of Jerome K. Jerome's works, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, in its structure of short, loosely connected musings on life.  Zaionchkovsky often begins his stories with an event from the life of his character, but then drifts off at an angle to explore the nature of different aspects of Muscovite life.  Through the writer's tangential tales of people both real and imaginary (there's a lot of meta-fictional byplay going on here!), we get to learn about the hierarchy of supermarkets and who can afford them; the difficulties for career women in finding a suitable partner; the explosion of possibilities for those looking to make their fortune in real estate; and, of course, the changes brought about by the move from a Communist to capitalist system.

Understandably though, our writer often turns his sardonic eye on the literary scene, contrasting the Russian adoration of their cultural icons with the relative lack of interest in their contemporary equivalents.  The protagonist is apparently fairly unsuccessful, despite being relatively well known (when a couple of dozen people turn up to one of his readings, the surprised organisers put it down to a cancellation elsewhere by a famous foreign writer!), and his struggle to scrape together enough money for a decent meal is ironically played out against a backdrop of museums for minor classic writers...

Part of the problem is that Moscow is now a modern city (in parts at least), moving at the pace of the industrialised world, and the writer has not quite acclimatised to that change.  In a world of professional publishers and gleaming boardrooms, he is decidedly out of place, as shown by a meeting he attends after being persuaded to write a book for a company:

"While the sugar was still dissolving in my cup, I managed to make the acquaintance of a lady designer and a lady marketologist (both shorn to match their boss's cropped style), a young culturologist, an old gastrologist and a representative of a PR agency on friendly terms with Griddle (a middle-aged man with manicured nails).  Noticing that they had all come to the meeting with folders, I felt guilty because I hadn't brought anything apart from my indigestion tablets."

It is little surprise that he is unable to come to terms with the idea of literature as product...

While the writer talks a lot about the city around him, there is one personal undercurrent to the collection.  In the very first story we hear about Tamara, and it gradually becomes clear that despite the apparent friendship the writer has with his successor, Dmitry Pavlovich, and the nonchalance with which the Muscovites chalk up their failed marriages, the loss of Tamara has affected him more deeply than he will openly admit.  It is this feeling of hurt, a sore spot which occasionally reemerges from under the dry humour the writer uses to cover it up, which adds a depth to the book it may have otherwise lacked.

Happiness is Possible isn't a perfect read.  The collection of vaguely-connected tales can pall after a while, and I occasionally found it a little repetitive.  I probably read it a little quickly though, and I think it's a book which should be read slowly, the reader dipping in for a chapter or two every now and then, rather than racing through it in a couple of days.  The little pieces are made to be read and reflected on, as there's probably a lot more there than first meets the eye.  In some ways, the book is more like a short-story collection - I would certainly hesitate to call it a novel...

Returning then to the the bold statement the title makes, Zaionchkovsky's little slices of Moscow life do seem to back up the idea that despite the problems living in a modern society brings, happiness is indeed possible.  But while this is true in general, is it true for our poor love-lorn writer friend?  To find that out, I'm afraid you'll just have to read the book ;)

*****

* I received an electronic review copy of Happiness is Possible from the publisher.

A Double Dash of Dostoyevsky (with a Garnett chaser)

It's been a while since my last Dostoyevsky read, so I thought it was time to crack open a book I've had sitting on my shelves for far too long now.  As you can see from the photo, my Wordsworth Editions purchase actually contains two of the great man's works, collected together for a very good reason - namely that they are both extremely autobiographical...

*****
The House of the Dead is a collection of reflections about time in a Siberian prison, penned by an upper-class political prisoner who has been sentenced to ten years' incarceration.  Preceded by a introductory chapter explaining where the notes come from, the book is a rather sobering description of life inside a typical Siberian labour camp.

The notes start with the arrival of the writer, a certain Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov, in Siberia, and dwell chiefly on his first year in the prison.  As a 'gentleman', he finds it hard to settle in the prison, only becoming grudgingly accepted by the peasant majority as his term wears on.  Despite his initial difficulties, the conditions in the prison are made to sound fairly acceptable: good food can be had for a price (as can vodka!); the work, while difficult, is fairly relaxed; and the inmates tend, on the whole, to avoid any kind of physical violence.

However, it's not all fun and games behind bars.  The barracks the prisoners stay in are covered in filth, and the cold Siberian winter leaves its mark on the poor wretches huddling under their greatcoats.  Worse than the physical suffering though is the mental torture the prisoners must endure.  Even if there is no immediate threat to their lives, the reality is that they are prisoners - and they won't be getting out for a long, long time...

*****
While The House of the Dead can be a bit of a depressing read, The Gambler is anything but.  It's only half the length of its partner novel, but it seems even shorter as the reader is swept along by the energetic pace and irresistible energy of the characters.  It takes place in the (imaginary!) German resort of Roulettenburg, a town where high society from all over Europe comes to take the waters and gamble their money away.

Our main man here is Alexei Ivanovich, a young tutor attached to a family of Russian nobles.  His employer, the General, is passionately in love with a beautiful young Frenchwoman (and badly in debt to a suave Frenchman), and his stay in Roulettenburg is spent waiting for news about the health of the General's rich aunt.  With so much riding on 'Granny' shuffling off this mortal coil as soon as possible then, you can imagine that her arrival in Roulettenburg is not a welcome one...

The chapter depicting Granny's arrival steals the show, her triumphant entry set to the sound of dropping jaws an example of the writer's genius.  However, The Gambler, as the title suggests, is not about family matters, but about the dangers of the roulette wheel and the near impossibility of escaping from the casino with both wallet and soul untouched.  Spurred on by both Granny and Polina, the woman he loves but can never attain, Alexei succumbs to the temptation to risk his luck.  The consequences?  Well, that would be telling ;)

*****
It might be difficult to believe that one man could experience both of these lives in the space of one existence, but Dostoyevsky did.  The House of the Dead is based on his own experiences in a Siberian labour camp, where he spent four years of his life imprisoned and isolated from society.  Later, in the middle of a gambling mania in Wiesbaden, and under extreme time pressure to deliver a novel he had promised, he dictated The Gambler to the woman who would later become his wife.  He definitely wasn't one for a quiet life...

Of the two, I much preferred The Gambler.  It has that page-turning quality which can make a classic novel into a thing of beauty, marrying great writing with a plot you can't wait to unravel.  The House of the Dead, by contrast, seems a little leaden and doesn't really go anywhere.  It's a collection of impressions, loosely bound together, and it's tempting to think that were it not for political constraints, it may have become a slightly less sanitised work of non-fiction.

Of course, there is one more factor that must be considered when evaluating this book, and that is the (in)famous translator, Constance Garnett.  Garnett polarises opinion, with many readers loathing her rendering of Dostoyevskian dialogue into incomprehensible, pseudo-Cockney rambling, while others like her (dated) style.  I would have to say that the translations probably played a large part in my opinions here: parts of the conversations in The House of the Dead were virtually unreadable.  For example:

"You great sow!... He's grown fat on the prison bread.  Glad he'll give us a litter of twelve suckling pigs by Christmas."
"But what sort of queer bird are you?" he cried, suddenly turning crimson.
"Just so, a bird."
"What sort?"
"That sort." pp25-6

This goes on for a while, until one of the men finally declares himself a "cocky-locky", at which point I looked to see how much more of the novel I had to read...

The Gambler, however, seemed to fly by much more smoothly, and I hardly noticed any glaring conversational wonders, often the sign of a good translation.  There was one problem with the language in The Gambler though; anyone whose French is not quite up to scratch may wish to consider investing in a dictionary before reading it.  My edition had no notes translating the frequent French comments into English :)

So, at the end of a post which has become a lot longer, and much less coherent, than I would have liked, let's summarise today's findings:

1) I liked The Gambler better.
2) Constance Garnett's translations are not for everyone, so you may want to find another edition.
3) Especially if your French isn't much good.
4) Prisons in nineteenth-century Russia weren't very clean.
5) Dostoyevsky had a very, very interesting life.

You're welcome :)