“A History of the Island” by Eugene Vodolazkin

Sometimes, with some books, it’s difficult to know where to start to describe them This is one of those times, and this is one of those books. 

It’s a dazzling work. It’s a fairy tale. It’s a documentary. It might be a history of Russia, or it might not. It’s a larger story than only Russia. The best I can say, and I’m still fumbling for words, it that it’s a cleverly written commentary on the state of Western civilization. 

 

It’s A History of the Island by Eugene Vodolazkin. 

 

Prince Parfeny and Princess Ksenia are 347 years old. If you want to know they’ve lived so long, you won’t find out if you keep reading. It’s simply that they have the genes for living a long time. They represent two branches of descendants from Caesar Augustus, who is said to have visited the island (never named, but it’s a large one) and on successive nights fathered the two children’s ancestors. Parfeny and Ksenia represent the northern and southern parts of the island, respectively, and their marriage was to unite the often-fractious people.

 

Except Ksenia always wanted to be a nun. And Parfeny loves her so much that he honors her decision.

 

They come to the throne while still children, and so successive regents are appointed. And like many regents often do, Parfeny’s and Ksenia’s regents often want to enrich themselves and run the show. And so, we follow the developments from barely post-medieval to contemporary times, including a quasi-Marxist phase known as “The Brighter Future.”

 

Eugene Vodolazkin

The history is written by a succession of monks, human like the rest of us and subject to their own frailties, loyalties, and events. For a time, Parfeny and Ksenia offer commentary on the history being written. And then they’re asked to be the subjects of a film by a famous French director. Nothing really is real until it’s filmed, correct? But what makes like and what makes great film are often two different things.

 

At times, you’re reading a history of Russia. And then you realize, no, it’s a history of Western Europe. But then you think it’s recognizably American. And then it comes to you: this is a book about Western civilization, a story made of so many impossible and often outrageous elements that it can be nothing other than true. Including the 347-year-old protagonists.

 

A native of Kiev in Ukraine, Vodolazkin works in the department of Old Russian Literature at the Pushkin House in St. Petersburg, where he is an expert in medieval Russian history and folklore. His novel Laurus won the National Big Book Award and the Yasnaya Polyana Award and had been translated into 18 languages. He lives in St. Petersburg.

 

A History of the Island will seem familiar because it is; it’s our story of Western civilization. It’s a commentary on this crazy culture we inhabit, a commentary on capitalism, Marxism, progressivism, and all the other isms; a commentary on Western man and Western Woman; a contemporary fairy tale that will have you riveted to the final, revealing pages.

 

It’s a wonder.

 

Related:

 

Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin.

 

The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin.

 

Brisbane by Eugene Vodolazkin.

 

Solovyov and Larionov by Eugene Vodolazkin.

 

Faith, hope, and love in Eugene Vodolazkin’s Brisbane – Nadya Williams at Current Magazine.

"Solovyov and Larionov" by Eugene Vodolazkin

Solovyov is a young historian, living in St. Petersburg. He grew up somewhere in the south; the village’s only name was its railroad mileage designation – Kilometer 715. His mother worked as a signaling worker for the railroad; when she died, his grandmother took her job for  time, but then the railroad closed the station. His closest friend was a girl, Leeza (for Elizabeth) Larionova, but Solovyov left the village to study at university. He hasn’t seen Leeza for six years. 

What the young historian has made the major focus of study is General Larionov (he seems always to have been called General, even as a child). The man (1882-1976) served as a general in the White (pro-tsarist) Army during the Russian Civil War. Many things are unknown about the general, despite the historical research done by many people. 

 

Solovyov determines to solve what is perhaps the biggest mystery of the general’s life: facing a victorious Red Army, Larionov saw his army off on ships sailing from Crimean ports. The general himself remained. He didn’t attempt to hide or disguise himself; the Reds knew who he was. Most expected him to be tortured and then killed. Instead, he was left alone, and he lived in Yalta for the rest of his life before dying of old age. His survival made no sense, and no one has been able to explain it.

 

Eugene Vodolazkin

Solovyov’s decision to solve the mystery takes him to the Crimea, to walk the same streets as the general walked in Yalta, to visit the people who were the general’s friends (or the children f his friends). He will learn that a significant clue is back in Kilometer 715, with his childhood friend. And he will come to understand that history isn’t so much written and studied as it is lived, that the general’s story will become his own story.

 

Solovyov and Larionov is the first novel published by Eugene Vodolazkin (in Russian, in 2012). It was translated and published in English in 2018, after his novels Laurus and The Aviator. It is the broad sweep of the last days of the Russian Civil War. It is about what it means to study history, and how history is often found in very unexpected places. It’s about finding oneself in many of those unexpected places. And it is a novel about railroads and travel, journeys to learn and discover, and sometimes journeys to escape.

 

In short, it is a very Russian novel written by a native Ukrainian. Translated by Lisa Hayden, Solovyov and Larionovmoves gradually but brilliantly to only what can be called its inevitable end. 

 

A native of Kiev, Vodolazkin works in the department of Old Russian Literature at the Pushkin House in St. Petersburg, where he is an expert in medieval Russian history and folklore. His novel Laurus won the National Big Book Award and the Yasnaya Polyana Award and had been translated into 18 languages. He lives in St. Petersburg; his new novel, A History of the Island, will be published in May.

 

Related:

 

Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin.

 

The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin.

 

Brisbane by Eugene Vodolazkin.

"Brisbane" by Eugene Vodolazkin

It begins with a chance meeting on an airplane, traveling from Paris to St. Petersburg. Gleb Yanovsky, a world-famous guitarist, is seated next to a writer, Sergei Nesterov. They eventually agree to write a book about Yanovksy’s life. And this begins years of a collaboration that takes Yanovsky back to his childhood, his youth, and his adulthood, a story that coincides with the decline and fall of the Soviet Union, the creation of Ukraine as an independent state, and the unsettled years that follow. 

Several books have been written about him, Gleb says, but none has told the story of his life. What plays a role in Gleb’s decision to allow Nesterov access for writing a book is that Gleb has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He’s facing the end of his career.

 

Yanovsky is Ukrainian, born in Kyiv. His father is an ardent Ukrainian nationalist. Early on, his mother separates and divorces his father. Gleb is essentially reared by his maternal grandmother. His mother’s dream is to live in Australia, and she will eventually correspond with a man in Brisbane and agree to marry him. Gleb remains home. He attends music school, but his father doubts whether the son has a gift for music. But the sound eventually proves the father wrong, although it will be many years in the future. 

 

Brisbane by Eugene Vodolazkin tells the story of Gleb Yanovsky. First published in Russian in 2018 and now translated by Marian Schwartz, it is a story of music, politics, love, and family. Given the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it is also an unsettling book to read. 

 

Eugene Vodolaazkin

The underlying animosity between Russia and Ukraine is ever-present. Gleb’s father is a Ukrainian; Gleb, educated in both Kyiv and St. Petersburg, feels part of both countries. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of an independent Ukraine, Gleb experiences the animosity more directly. 

 

But the novel is more about music and how music comes to structure a man’s life. It is only by chance that a producer, attending an art gallery show in Munich, happens to hear Gleb play the guitar and hum while he pays (which becomes his artistic trademark). His career doesn’t so much take flight as rockets upward, until decades later when Gleb must confront Parkinson’s disease.

 

One suspects that Brisbane contains a not inconsiderable number of autobiographic elements. Like his protagonist, Vodolazkin was born in Kyiv and educated in St. Petersburg. Both initially become teachers (Volodolazkin remains one). Both are involved in philology and literature. Voloalazkin works in the department of Old Russian Literature at the Pushkin House in St. Petersburg, where he is an expert in medieval Russian history and folklore. The author of several novels, he was awarded the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Literature Prize in 2019. His novel Laurus won the Russian Big Book Award and the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award. 

 

A word about the translation. I don’t speak or read Russian, so I can’t speak to the quality of the translation. But I can say that the novel doesn’t have any of the linguistic awkwardness one can often find in translations. Swartz also has extensive experience in translation works of Russian literature, including Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s multi-volume The Red Wheel, his story of the Russian Revolution.

 

To read Brisbane is to discover conflict, language, music, and life. It’s a wonderful novel. 

 

Related:

 

Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin.

 

The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin.

 

How the Russian and Ukrainian Languages Intersect in Eugene Volodolazkin’s Brisbane (by Marian Schwartz, the translator).

"The Aviator" by Eugene Vodolazkin

Innokenty Petrovich Platonov slowly awakens. He’s in a hospital bed. At first, he doesn’t know his own name or why he’s there. Slowly and over an extended period, a nurse and a physician, Dr. Geiger, explain. 

Childhood memories come first. His favorite book to read was Robinson Crusoe; he can recall his grandmother reading it to him when he was sick. His fascination with airplanes and aviators. Memories of traveling to a summer retreat and playing airplanes with a cousin. 

 

The nurse unintentionally leaves a bottle of his pills on the beside. And he sees the manufacture and expiration dates – 1997 and 1999, respectively. It’s the first indication that something is not right. He looks like he’s 30 years old, but he was born in 1900 and is “as old as the century.”

 

As more is gradually revealed, the doctor has him keep a journal. Innokenty comes to understand that he raised in the middle or upper middle class of pre-Revolutionary Russia, that the Revolution destroyed the life he’d known, and that he was eventually imprisoned in the Gulag of Stalin and the Soviet system. And more: he became a test animal in a scientific program – he was frozen in a tank of liquid nitrogen to be thawed at some future date. Dr. Geiger succeeded in unfreezing him. Innokenty is now living is a culture and time he doesn’t understand, where little outside a few buildings in St. Petersburg is recognizable. He is a man of a vanished time having to make his way, much like the Robinson Crusoe of his childhood stories.

 

Eugene Vodolazkin

Innokenty had a great love, a young woman named Anastasia, a professor’s daughter. He will learn she is still alive, barely hanging on in a hospital, watched over by her granddaughter, also named Anastasia. 

 

The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin (translated by Lisa Hayden) is a novel of Russia in the immediate post-Soviet period and the pre-Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary periods. Innokenty Platonov is a representative of a vanished time and the soul so many strive for, the people who believed that the end of Soviet dictatorship would bring true democracy, only to be disappointed. Innokenty sees and understands this disconnect, and his story because a debate, not only of the Russian soul and Russian people, but a debate about all of us. And while his name implies “innocence,” his personal history may not.

 

Voloalazkin works in the department of Old Russian Literature at the Pushkin House in St. Petersburg, where he is an expert in medieval Russian history and folklore. The author of several novels, he was awarded the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Literature Prize in 2019. His novel Laurus won the Russian Big Book Award and the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award. 

 

The Aviator is a remarkable, wonderful story. It is a Russian story and a universal story. It’s a love story, and a story about science and faith. It is a novel of the gulag. It is a story about the Robinson Crusoe in each of us, we strangers in a strange land. And it’s a romance of the dashing aviator contained in each of us, the hero taking both courageous and foolhardy risks. 

 

Related:

 

Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin.

“Laurus” by Eugene Vodolazkin

Arseny is born in Russia in 1440, or “the 6948^th year since the Creation of the world.” When he is seven, his father brings him to live with the boy’s grandfather, Christofer; Arseny’s parents have grain to reap even though they are awaiting a recurrence of the plague. His parents do not survive the plague. Christofer raises Arseny, teaching him what he knows about healing, everything from setting broken bones and dealing with illnesses to helping couples become pregnant. He also teaches Arseny about nature and God. They live within the shadow of a monastery.

These themes – healing, nature and God – suffuse Eugene Vodolazkin’s Laurus. This isn’t a novel about religion and faith set in medieval Russia; this is a novel that places the reader firmly in the reality of medieval Russia. We live Arseny’s life. We heal with Arseny’s hands. We live his life, and it is a remarkable life. It is a story that moves in unexpected directions. And it is a story of redemption, and how a holy man, in the sense that medieval Russia understood “holy men,” finds redemption.

Laurus is an astonishing work. I approached it with skepticism because I couldn’t imagine becoming engaging with a novel about a holy man in medieval Russia. From the first pages, I could barely stand to put it down.

At times, it reads like an old story found in archives, complete with the occasional use of archaic language, which translator Lisa Hayden transforms into Old English for the English translation. The challenges she faced in the translation had to be prodigious; see “On Translating an ‘Untranslatable’ Book,” linked below.

And at times, it reads like “a journal of the plague years.” The plague becomes a kind of character of its own in the story. It is how Arseny meets the woman he falls in love with, although he wouldn’t have described it that way. It is how his reputation as a holy man is made – the healer who seems personally impervious to the contagion of the plague, allowing him to heal, often to the point of exhaustion. It is how he becomes protected by a prince.

Eugene Vodolazkin

Arseny will go on a journey to Jerusalem, a mission of redemption. His companion will be, of all people, an Italian who has occasional glimpses into the future, far into the future. Those visions help to make Laurus something of a contemporary story as well – God, and faith, exist outside of time.

Voloalazkin works in the department of Old Russian Literature at the Pushkin House in St. Petersburg, where he is an expert in medieval Russian history and folklore. That expertise likely has much to do with how Laurus is structured, how it reads, who the characters are and what they do.

It is an engaging story, a remarkable story, a revealing story. And it is, perhaps the most revealing about its readers. Laurus is a novel about medieval Russia that speaks directly to the society we live in today. 

Related:

On Translating an “Untranslatable” Book – Lisa Hayden at Literary Hub

“People Need Other Things to Live By” – Rod Dreher of American Conservative  interviews Vovolazkin

On the novel Laurus – Eugene Volodazkin at English Pen

Painting: Holy Man, the Soul of the Russian People by Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov.