This ingenious novel is presented as a chronicle of an island from medieval to modern times. The island is not on the map, but it is real beyond doubt. It cannot be found in history books, yet the events are painfully recognizable. The monastic chroniclers dutifully narrate events they witness. The entries mostly seem objective, but at least one monk simultaneously drafts and hides a 'true' history, to be discovered centuries later. And why has someone snipped out a key prophesy about the island's fate?
These chronicles receive commentary today from an elderly couple who are the island's former rulers. Prince Parfeny and Princess Ksenia are truly extraordinary: they are now 347 years old. Eyewitnesses to much of their island's turbulent history, they offer sharp-eyed observations on the changing flow of time and their people's persistent delusions. Why is the royal couple still alive? Is there a chance that an old prophecy comes to pass, and two righteous persons save the island from catastrophe?
Vodolazkin is at his best recasting history, in all its hubris and horror, by finding the humor in its absurdity. For listeners with an appetite for more than a dry, rational, scientific view of what motivates, divides, and unites people, A History of the Island conjures a world still suffused with mystical powers.
After Gleb Yanovsky, a celebrated guitarist, is diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at age fifty, he permits a writer, Sergei Nesterov, to pen his biography. For years, they meet regularly as Gleb recounts the life he's lived thus far: a difficult childhood in Kyiv, his formative musical studies in St. Petersburg, and his later years in Munich, where he lives with his wife and meets a thirteen-year-old virtuoso whom he embraces as his own daughter. In a mischievous and tender account, Gleb recalls a personal story of a lifetime quest for meaning, and how the burden of success changes with age.
Expanding the literary universe spun in his earlier novels, Vodolazkin explores music and fame, heritage and belonging, time and memory in this beautifully-wrought and relevant tale that will resonate with fans of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Umberto Eco, and Solzhenitsyn.
At the stunning finale of Brisbane, all the carefully knit stitches unravel into a puzzle: Whose story is it-the subject's or the writer's? Are art and love really no match for death? Is memory a reliable narrator? In Brisbane, the city of our dreams, as in music, Gleb hopes he's found a path to eternity-and a way to stop the clock.
Larionov. A general of the Imperial Russian Army who mysteriously avoided execution by the Bolsheviks when they swept to power and went on to live a long life in Yalta, leaving behind a vast heritage of memoirs.
Solovyov. The young history student who travels to Crimea, determined to find out how Larionov evaded capture after the 1917 revolution.
With wry humor, Eugene Vodolazkin, one of Russia's foremost contemporary writers, takes listeners on a fascinating journey through a momentous period of Russian history, interweaving the intriguing story of two men from very different backgrounds that ultimately asks whether we can really understand the present without first understanding the past.
From award-winning author Eugene Vodolazkin comes this poignant story of memory, love, and loss spanning twentieth-century Russia.
A man wakes up in a hospital bed, with no idea who he is or how he came to be there. The only information the doctor shares with his patient is his name: Innokenty Petrovich Platonov. As memories slowly resurface, Innokenty begins to build a vivid picture of his former life as a young man in Russia in the early twentieth century, living through the turbulence of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. But soon, only one question remains: how can he remember the start of the twentieth century, when the pills by his bedside were made in 1999? Reminiscent of the great works of twentieth-century Russian literature, with nods to Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Bulgakov's The White Guard, The Aviator cements Vodolazkin's position as the rising star of Russia's literary scene.
It is the late fifteenth century and a village healer in Russia called Laurus is powerless to help his beloved as she dies in childbirth, unwed and without having received communion. Devastated and desperate, he sets out on a journey in search of redemption. But this is no ordinary journey: it is one that spans ages and countries, and which brings him face-to-face with a host of unforgettable, eccentric characters and legendary creatures from the strangest medieval bestiaries. Laurus's travels take him from the Middle Ages to the Plague of 1771, where as a holy fool he displays miraculous healing powers, to the political upheavals of the late-twentieth century. At each transformative stage of his journey he becomes more revered by the church and the people, until he decides, one day, to return to his home village to lead the life of a monastic hermit-not realizing that it is here that he will face his most difficult trial yet. Laurus is a remarkably rich novel about the eternal themes of love, loss, self-sacrifice, and faith, from one of Russia's most exciting and critically acclaimed novelists.
