The DREAM LIFE OF SUKHANOV
Olga Gushin
Putnam • January 2006
For many years I thought I understood my life so well – it was all so clear, so even, so well arranged. But recently... recently things have been happening to me, and well...
It is 1985. Anatoly Pavlovich Sukhanov is at the peak of his professional career as critic and editor – a career created, we eventually learn, by sacrificing his artistic gift 30 years before. Over the course of a few cold, damp winter days, chance events, forgotten family and friends and darkened memories swirl and mingle into a perfect storm of doubt and dissolution. First, there is confusion. And then transformation.
This is a luminous novel about art, friendship, fidelity and truth, played out in warm, recognizable Moscow interiors and gloomy courtyards. Gushin has a profound gift of language and a distinctly visual prose:
It was warm, warmer than the day before, and the sun, about to glide below the stubble of antennas on the neighboring roofs, suffused the air, the trees, the peeling stucco façades with a vespertine lucidity, imparting to the old quarter of Moscow that precious quality of rosy precision occasionally found in faintly colored nineteenth-century photographs of city vistas.
This first novel stands strongly in its own right. But it becomes even more impressive when you consider that Gushin was born in Russia, that English is her second language. If only more American-born writers could express themselves so vividly in their native tongue.
The sometimes surreal, dreamscape quality of this work – more than hinted at in the title – is at first a challenge. One reads and then backtracks, aching to understand if we are witnessing the awake or dreaming Sukhanov. But then you let go, realizing that dreaming and wakefulness are not two sides of a coin, but different points on a broad continuum. It is all one Sukhanov.
Gushin reminds of Andrei Makine, of Mark Helprin, of Ian McEwan. It is not often that we witness the arrival of a writer of her talent. Savor it.
gannibal: The moor of
st. petersburg
Hugh Barnes
Profile Books (profilebooks.com) • 2005
Part historical detective novel, part fiction, several parts legend and a few parts history and journalistic travelogue thrown in for good measure, Barnes’ ostensible biography of the mysterious Gannibal is a fantastically great read.
His origins and pre-Russian history shrouded in myth (passing from slavery or servitude in Africa to the court of the Sultan of Turkey, then somehow to be gifted to the Russian court), Gannibal was adopted and educated by Peter the Great and rose in his meritocratic Russia to become a highly-decorated soldier, diplomat and spy. Only, of course, to be exiled in disgrace in his later years, forgotten and neglected.
An influential general (he legendarily spotted Suvorov’s talent at a very early age) and advisor (he sparred frequently with Menshikov and dabbled frequently in court intrigues), his legacy in Russia extended far beyond his lifetime. For Alexander Pushkin was his grandson, and included among his heirs are several Mountbattens and others close to the British Royals.
The story of Gannibal took hold of Barnes for several years, and he researched it while he was stationed in Russia as a journalist, reporting on the Afghan war, among other things. His journalistic approach and tone make the book all the more readable and interesting. Not satisfied with the legends and mysteries of Gannibal’s purported African roots, Barnes travels to the Afro-Russian general’s mythical hometowns – never mind they are today in the middle of a war zone. And then there is Barnes’ habit of beginning sections enticingly thus:
In the attic of the archaeological museum in Pskov, one of the oldest towns in Russia, a box of church documents lies on a large rectangular table. It is full of inventories, accounts, receipts, bills, memoranda, reports and old bundles of letters from other eras, other worlds. The archive at Pskov is unusually chaotic, and yet its disorder must be seen in the context of history...
You just know a great story is going to follow that.
Gannibal arrived in Russia in 1705, rose to maturity at the peak of Peter’s reign and did not pass away until 1781. This uncommon longevity makes him an incomparable looking glass through which to view 18th century life in Russia. And Gannibal certainly saw and witnessed plenty. For those interested in getting a taste of Russian court life, its actors and intrigues, Barnes satiates, masterfully weaving together second-hand sources, modern impressions and literary diversions.
Unfortunately, there is no startling autobiography uncovered from one of those archive attics. As Barnes himself admits early on, “Nobody can reconstruct the linear narrative of Gannibal’s life. It is full of gaps, of undecipherable clues, of mysteries and riddles.”
Nonetheless, it is that very fact – the mystery and contention of it all – that makes this a fascinating tale. As when Barnes notes that, “In Russia, the search for Gannibal’s birthplace has come to resemble the force-field of a cultish religion.” You cannot but be interested in who is battling whom, who is winning and what evidence is being tossed about.
This biography of the man Montesquieu called the “dark star of Russia’s enlightenment” is everything one could hope for.
NIGHT WATCH
In 2004, the Russian film Night Watch grossed more in Russia than Lord of the Rings. The phantasmagoric film is the first in director Timur Bekmambetov’s trilogy based on the three best-selling science-fiction novels of Sergei Lukyanenko – Night Watch, Day Watch and Dusk Watch.
Set in contemporary Moscow, Night Watch (Nochnoy Dozor) is a phantasmagoric thriller that is part Blade Runner, part Matrix, part Lord of the Rings. The plot revolves around the conflict and balance maintained between the forces of Light and Dark – the result of a medieval truce between those who rule the night and those who rule the day.
In the films, an ancient prophecy is about to come true: a powerful “Other” will rise up, be tempted by one of the sides and tip the balance, plunging the world into a renewed war between Dark and Light.
Night Watch is soon to be released into U.S. theaters in by Fox Searchlight. But the film is already available on DVD, with grammatically-challenged English subtitles, from redsundvd.com
The second film, Day Watch, is being released in Russia in 2006 (it will be titled Night Watch 2 in the U.S.) and the third installment will be released in 2007. It will be in English – much to the dismay of Russian filmgoers.
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