An Interview With Vanya Bagaev

Towards Pure Literature

Dear Republic,

This is a long interview but there’s a lot here but for people who want to think about literary form in fresh ways. Vanya has previously written for The Republic of Letters here while his novel is discussed here.

-ROL

AN INTERVIEW WITH VANYA BAGAEV

1.Where did you grow up?

A small village in the middle of nowhere in Russia, called Tulubaika, though it’s not on the map any more, and you would know it used to be called Tulubaika only if you lived there. Researching for my next book, I learned it was mentioned in official documents in 1678. The nearest biggest city is a three-hour car ride, a popular place of exile in the Imperial times. E.g. Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote about it smth like: “It’s where the world ends, where you get your shackles provided, and your career ends.”

2.I assume you were always an insane obsessive reader?

I wouldn’t say always, and I wouldn’t say I’m an obsessive reader at all. When I was a child, I used to read much more, obsessively perhaps at times — we had a considerable library of Russian and international literature — but during the teenage years I mostly played World of Warcraft, and in uni I returned to reading again, but still, I reckon I spent more time playing guitar than reading. Plus I wouldn’t say I read a lot now, probably around 10 books a year, and amongst those, some are rereads. When reading, I vocalise everything in my head and can’t do it otherwise, so it is rather slow. Of course, I’d like to read more, though it’s such a boring, even vulgar thing to say, but I don’t think I really need that — the right books find me at the right time. Plus, I’ve always loved cinema and music and video games as much as literature, and have probably spent more time obsessing over various aspects of those than I spend time obsessively reading. Now, it’s not that different, though I could say I’m obsessed with literature overall more than ever.

3.Did you always want to be a writer?

Not always, but at times — yes. Obsessions shift, as I mentioned. When I was a child, I wrote and made my first book myself. It was a story about anthropomorphic cats doing spy things. In uni years, I wrote short scripts for my brother’s WoW machinimas. Only a few years back, ~2021, when I started writing prose fiction and engaging more consciously with literature, I realised — yes, I want to be a writer, though I’m not sure what it means. Is it the one who writes, right?

4.Do you think there is a such a thing as a Russian soul? What is it? Do you have one?

I reckon Russian soul is a myth or a meme that tries to tap into Russian Imperial identity, which is, sadly, not entirely a thing of the past. I’m not sure where it started — in Russia or abroad — but in Russia itself there’s always been an argument about what is it, is it like Western, is it like Eastern, is it something else. Moreover, I don’t think anybody knows the answer. I want to ask as well, what do you imply saying “Russian”? It’s a genuine question because it can be “someone from the country of Russian Federation” (or often, bizarrely, “someone from Soviet Union”, which makes no sense to me) or “someone ethnically Russian”. I don’t think people understand the distinction. In Russian, there are two words for those, for example, but in Anglophone discourse (at least) it’s used as an umbrella term for everyone who’s coming from that part of the Earth, which is confusing. Imagine the United Kingdom was English Federation (or earlier English Empire) instead, and everyone referred to all citizens of it as English. It’s worse with Russia because it has maybe hundreds of ethnicities, languages, cultures, etc. So the answer, whether there’s Russian soul, would really depend on where you ask it. I, for example, have Tatar ancestry, learned bits of the language when I was a child, etc. And historically, Russia has been influenced a lot by other cultures, even those it fully or partially consumed. Is it fair to say that Russia is a sum of those things? If yes, is Russian soul also a sum of all those consumed “souls”? This is the same question any empire could ask itself. So, we can say “Russian soul” exists, if it’s that sum of things with not entirely fair name, that at its core — not national, but imperial. It’s been haunting Russia, nobody eradicated that imperial virus properly, every time after another collapse trying to make another attempt into empiring. Which is probably why we have what we have presently — a government that still wants to eat and control neighbouring countries for the sake of that archaic ambition.

5.Assuming the answer to that last question is yes, what is it like having one of those?

Terrible, not recommended. I can’t even give up my citizenship without going to Russia, and that would take an effort. Imagine what I have to go through to give up my “Russian soul”.

6.How integrated is literature into a Russian education — or at least the education you had. Is it like here where the kids are kicking and screaming all the way through or is it different?

There’s a separate class called “Russian language”, where you learn grammar, orthography, etc. and a separate class “Literature”, where you read books, and you have those throughout most of your time in school. As of “Literature”, it’s mostly based on classics, and often they are weirdly timed, like reading Turgenev in fifth grade. I reckon nobody likes it the way it is, it’s not designed to make children love literature, but to shove the classics into them. You have to read a lot — there’s typically a massive summer reading list to prepare for the year — then you go through most things from that list during the year, do tests, write essays, learn to recite poetry, other related things. I think for most, those who don’t find that special joy in literature, it’s a torture. People cheat constantly, read summaries to prepare, everything is rushed through, such as one could argue War and Peace should be read and discussed for a year, but it’s just one of multiple books in that year. There’s no conscious and thoughtful approach to it, it’s purely bureaucratic at this point. Very few end up understanding things they read in school and remembering anything, even fewer — loving literature. Those who love reading, read things outside of curriculum, usually (which I did). The Russian education system fully inherits the Soviet education system and is built on shame, fear, and submission; literature isn’t an exception.

It improves in university, though. If you go to study humanities, you’ll likely have literature again, especially (of course) if you go to become a journalist or linguist or such, and you have higher chances of meeting passionate professors, and, as an adult, engage with classics, including international, but another big chance is you’ll get some stern Soviet man or woman shoving the same classics in you again. Being in STEM, I didn’t have literature in university.

7.What’s the curriculum? Is it mostly classic literature or modern mixed in?

It is, I reckon, mostly classics. You have to be really lucky to get anything modern or actually fun to read as a child. It’s pretty standardised, so the teachers’ hands are tied. If you want anything modern or international, you have to do it yourself, read, watch YouTube, etc. — there’s plenty of that, thanks to the internet.

8.Of the following writers, put them in order of preference: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Pasternak, Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn.

This would be very random. I care a lot about Chekhov (for inventing the form based on what’s not said, the most important innovation in literature in the 19th century); then the affinity spreads to Gogol, Pushkin; then Turgenev — for what he did for the popularisation of Russian literature; then Bulgakov (for M&M and the overall vibe); then Dostoevsky; completely randomly: Pasternak / Tolstoy / Lermontov; then Solzhenitsyn.

9.What do you think happened? Why did Russian literature vault to the level it did in the 19th century?

The main reason is the very fast, explosive growth and absence of established literary tradition before 19th century — it was practically non-existent / irrelevant before Pushkin. Russia was way behind Europe in many aspects before the 19th century, and then it exploded. Like someone said, “a stretched spring strikes harder”. It was also a relatively closed society, like Japan for a very long time, and quite oppressive, and that unfreedom was a fertile soil for the culture to bloom. Literature was a new, shiny thing, and the number of people was increasing quickly. Plus, given censorship, literature became a ground for philosophers and publicists to express ideas more freely at that time. Many Russian philosophers of that era also wrote novels. One other reason, that I read recently about, is the new class — a wealthy merchant was very eager to become closer to aristocracy and seem more European by engaging with culture, including literature, and the amount of money poured into things like publishing, newspapers, magazines, etc. was pretty high. Given that all of it was sudden, it was something new, something very few were doing before, especially at that level, it could lead to explosive growth. There was no literary tradition before, as I said, it was something new-built for the 19th century, and it seems building something new from scratch was very effective, compared to cases when you have “tradition” or “industry” and all the conservative norms attached to it, how things should be written, what they are about etc. So, I believe the lack of canon is what made Russian literature so great so quickly.

10.Who are a few of your favorite 20th century Russian writers? — maybe introduce us to one or two American readers may not know.

I want to say Bely, Sokolov, Narbikova — I had a chance to talk a bit about the latter two sneaking them into my survey I wrote for you, so I’ll say a few more words on Bely and what forms my preference here.

Andrei Bely is brilliant — probably the most innovative stylist who did remarkable things with the Russian language. He was also a poet, which was true even when he wrote prose creating what some referred to as “ornamental prose” or “rhythmic prose”, which means he wrote novels with poetic meter, e.g. much of his most famous novel Petersburg follows anapaestic metrical foot and sounds much like poetry if you read it aloud (or in your head), with plenty of syntactic inversions, archaic words, maybe neologisms, etc. together with many poetic devices to sustain it. It creates a peculiar atmosphere, as if it’s even another language, and slows you down, and I haven’t found a writer who did the same at the same length. Andrei Platonov’s language also sounds much like free verse at times, and Sasha Sokolov’s A School For Fools also often sounds and feels like poetry — he even coined the term proesia — though all three of them do it differently. This creates a certain tension to recommend them to Western readers — the success of that would depend a lot on the quality of translation. I haven’t had a chance to compare them myself yet, but I’ve started researching for an article on what translation of Petersburg is the best and most faithful to the original aesthetic, especially its poetic and sonic qualities, much ignored by many translations as it turned out — some people really think that if you retell the book’s events in a different language it would be enough to call it “a translation,” which is bizarre to me; it’s better not to read it at all than to read something translated like that. I have a strong personal position about it, for I often write in Russian and then translate, and the main requirement for me is always to translate “the voice”, even if it won’t sound as natural in English. So, based on what I’ve researched so far about Petersburg, the translation you should get is David McDuff’s (1995), though this opinion can change once I dig in and read more. The problem with Petersburg particularly, there are two Russian versions of it, the original 1913 version, and another one, published after Bely himself did some edits. The 1913 original is considered artistically superior and, well, trüe OG; hence a translation must use it as well. McDuff was the first English translator who used that version, and the first who attempted to recreate the poetic rhythms and language games of the original.

Both Bely, Sokolov, whose A School for Fools (again) could be an extra chapter to Ulysses, and e.g. Narbikova and Shishkin (I wrote about them a bit in my RuLit survey for you), all belong to one, or at least adjacent, branches of literary traditions. The best example of English literature counterpart would be, of course, James Joyce. The truth is — it might be difficult to believe — Joyce matters as much for contemporary Russian literature as Dostoevsky or Tolstoy; he’s that secret uncle. You can hear his name a lot said by modern Russian writers when they cite their influences, myself included. For some reason, I strongly feel like I’ve said it many times already, but I do feel it’s important to repeat — if it is indeed a repetition — and emphasise it. I’ll say it again many times over; Joyce, and the modernist tradition overall, is at the core of Russian literature, like, of course, many other things. He’s a great example of “delayed effect” when it comes to continuity in the literary tradition, as well as cross-pollination in literature between different countries.

So, inside that tradition, it’s normal for a writer not to be very popular but still inspire others to creating great works, thus having the larger effect on culture than many popular writers could even dream of having. Both Bely, and then Sokolov, are such writers — others I mentioned (and beyond) often said that explicitly, sometimes I can just see that when reading them. If language were a musical instrument, in this literary tradition, playing it with technical virtuosity in an innovative way would be a must. In this literary tradition, form is as important as substance, and typically, they can’t be detached from each other, the form resolves dramatic tension alone, and you experience a certain cathartic bliss just by absorbing the language and prose, just listening to it, watching the images that occur before you. Perhaps it’s cinema in prose, in a way, paradoxically so because it would be impossible to make any of those works into film — or to any other medium — without losing something essential. For me, this is “Pure Literature”, an aesthetic framework wherein the degree of literary merit — amongst many other variables mentioned — depends on the difficulty of translating the work into another medium. It doesn’t study abstract objects and isn’t completely detached from reality, but it does go beyond the surface-level realism into the more surreal, absurd, experimental modes.

11.The reading list even for serious Western readers sort of gives out around 1960. It’s Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky, and then that’s the end. But can you talk about some of the developments that happened in Russian literature after that period?

The main reason would probably be isolation again, there was a lack of communication with the Western world, hardly much was translated, only exiles got a chance to become famous in the West, including Brodsky.

The second reason is — the very same Brodsky in his Nobel speech said that in the 20th century, Russian culture became even more exotic to the West overall after all the upheavals. If 19th century classics are in the same plane as European novels because of similar starting conditions, in the 20th century, starting with the Silver Age when plenty of artistic innovations happened, many movements started, and even though they died shortly after the revolution, they’ve had lasting impact, still do. This ties in with what I said about the 19th century — the lack of canon, which is still true for the 20th century. There were classics at that time already, a lot of respect, admiration, inspiration, and the looming weight of figures like Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, etc., but it’s still a minimal list of names with whom some 20th century writers even shared the same timeline — it was so recent. The Silver Age, however, created a lot of new experimental forms, often through negation of that relatively-newly-formed canon, suggesting to “ditch the likes of Dostoevsky” (e.g. Russian Futurists), but for the later generations, 1960s and beyond, the Silver Age itself became an endless source of inspiration — many again shared with them the same timeline. It’s been a melting pot of ideas and experiments since that time. To clarify: “canon” implies a closed list, institutional weight, something you either submit to or rebel against, and creates the anxiety of influence, the museum. I believe in Russia, that list is considered “forefathers” who provided you with a gift of possibility. All Russian writers have always known the canon very well, but it’s always been considered something that enables you, not constraints or idols to worship and mimic. You can love Dostoevsky without feeling you owe him anything except gratitude for existing first.

Thirdly, for an individual, a writer, the Soviet experience has become vastly different from Western experience, though I do believe this applies to Eastern Europe at large, rather than just to the USSR. Many wrote for themselves, never thinking of getting published, only to pass a manuscript to their friends. It was writing for the sake of art, not to become a “professional writer”, there was no industry for that to happen either. Then the ‘90s — another upheaval, a lot of artistic freedom now could go public, the Western literature got into Russia, many obscure Soviet-era works were published for the first time. Thus, Literature has never been institutionalised in Russia, except, of course, the Soviet Writers Union or whatever is its name, that produce roughly a negative number of great works. The lack of common experience, cultural difference, the experimental nature of Russian literature, often absence of good translations (and given the experimental nature they are often incredibly challenging to do) only made it more exotic for a Western reader. Even from my experience: many mention my work is “experimental”, which always surprises me — there’s not much experimentation in it if you put it in the context of contemporary Russian literature.

12.Put the following writers in order of preference: Sasha Sokolov, Vladimir Sorokin, Viktor Pelevin, Mikhail Shishkin, Dimitry Glukhovsky, Lyudmila Ulitskaya.

I can confidently put Sokolov and Shishkin first, as you might’ve guessed, then Sorokin, Pelevin (early stuff), Ulitskaya, Glukhovsky.

13.I have the sense that something happened within Russian literature in the last decades that you wouldn’t understand even from reading the 20th century classics — and that kind of hasn’t reached the West. I don’t know how to describe it but it has to do with dimensionality. It’s like literature kind of leaves the world as it is and produces this other parallel world and then is encyclopedic about that world, so it’s like literature is operating on a bigger scale, like everything can be taken into it. Do you know what I’m talking about? Is that in the direction of a decent description?

That’s a fantastic question. Thankfully, it’s a text interview, and I’ve had time to think about it. I want to lay out some cards first: (1) there’s a lot of diversity within Russian literature, some works are more like Western ones, some less, so, when you say “that kind of hasn’t reached the West” I’d add “at large” or “on average”, it’s better to see it as some delirious Venn diagram rather than a set of distinct categories, continuous rather than discrete; there’s certain idiosyncrasy, of course, but I doubt it completely “hasn’t reached the West”, is what I’m trying to say; (2) an average Russian reader (in my bubble) has rather a bigger tolerance to the degree of experimental and weird, both in form and substance, which might “at large” create an illusion that something completely different is going on in Russian literature; (3) for a Western reader, Russian literature is classics + a well known small bunch from the 20th century literature, as you mention; (4) I can feel that in the West, postmodernism in literature is often frowned upon, as if a literary scene negates its development, and tries to either fossilise or develop somewhat artificially — I don’t know how to explain that properly — while in Russia, for me at least, the development of literature is more organic and always from the bottom; (5) the Silver Age, man, the Silver Age, plus all the upheavals I mentioned before. All these — and more — can create an illusion that something entirely different is going on in the last few decades, but in reality it’s just two branches growing further in different directions. I don’t think the last few decades are substantially different; the historical context is, but not how literature functions. All these — a tangent to the question, but also a summary of a few things we’ve talked about, and since I’m answering the questions in no particular order, I might refer to some future question as well by saying that.

Going back to postmodernism and metamodernism and whatever -modernism — it’s not frowned upon in Russia, a work of literature cannot be considered “too cynical” or “not sincere” or “not having anything to do with the real world”; I reckon people aren’t concerned about those categories and distinctions at all, literature is literature and that’s it. Some do, however, genuinely believe that the contemporary Russian literature has derailed from its course too much and “they used to make things better, didn’t they”. Those would either be an old generation or a very new generation, for whom the language of such literature doesn’t work and doesn’t match their view of reality. In case of the very new generation, they have yet to invent their own language, and if you look back, it’s what has been going on! Every generation of Russian writers invents their own “language”, not in a sense of vocabulary or syntax or registers — though that too — but in a sense of how we describe the surrounding reality. I believe the Russian literature has always used the best available means to describe the surrounding reality in the exact period of time. To succeed in that, shedding realist shackles really helps. Russian writers realised that the reality cannot be described with conservative forms any more, accepted that, and started inventing new forms what match the perception of that reality. If you combine that with the (1-5) I mentioned, it makes even more sense.

Now, I want to go back to Pure Literature here, or rather Pure anything — can be mathematics (where I borrowed the term, see “pure mathematics”), music, painting, cinema, etc. In the context of mathematics, “pure” would refer to the study of abstract objects for the sake of enjoyment and genuine human pathological curiosity, for the sake of itself, one could say. In the case of arts, particularly literature, we don’t deal with abstract objects, the degree of abstraction can vary, but they are always some characters inhabiting some world, but sometimes, especially in our times, the world feels contradictory, irrational, illogical, surreal, chaotic, weird, and that feeling then is reflected in literature, changing the method of how it’s created. So, it does have something to do with dimensions, for the dimensions of the real world aren’t enough any more to adequately capture what the world is like: it’s way more complex, motley, fragmented, constantly changing, but at the same time — familiar. What Pure Literature does then is defamiliarising our perception of that world, creating a parallel world that is surreal, absurd, and yet feels eerily familiar. Then those “abstractions” actually reveal a real structure that cannot be seen from below, from the world of real forms, only from above — from the world of abstract forms. It’s the world of expressions, subtle feelings, perception, subconscious, images, that describe the real better than the real can. This abstract world isn’t limited to the real forms, especially conservatively real forms, and can then include everything and even more. It is, I would say, a metaphysical world, and Russian literature always has been concerned with metaphysics a lot to compensate for the lack of great philosophers — they are also included there. Thus, literature becomes not just entertainment escapism but philosophical escapism as well. The world overall, and the country, has been changing too fast, often in devastating ways no literary form has time to solidify, the canon has no time to form, as if it always has to be reinvented from the ground up. That’s why it might feel that the past few decades are so different from the previous few decades, for example.

14.When you read Anglo-American literature, what do you notice? What’s interesting to you? What isn’t?

I notice disproportionally higher focus on storytelling and rarely on language and form, not that it isn’t present at all, but the most popular/praised works of Anglo-American literature these days seem to completely ignore that aspect of writing, especially on Substack — things have to be standardly smooth to have an appeal for whatever reason. However, it’s clear that there are at least a few kinds of literature, and we always conflate them by calling different things with one word — a reverse Babel problem. I notice that literature is treated as a vehicle for some message, whilst the literature itself, in the Pure sense, doesn’t matter as much — if you could pick any medium to deliver the same message as effectively or even more effectively, why would you pick literature? You could make a film, for example. It often happens; I’m sure some writers write having the idea “this is gonna be filmed one day” in mind, like getting a Netflix deal or whatnot. I notice ambition overall but almost no formal ambition whatsoever, which is sad. The whole ambition appears to be concentrated on writing a Great American Novel, for example, which, as a venture, gives a strong Moby-Dick energy. I’ve never heard of the same amount of discourse about “no great novels any more” or “people are not reading” everywhere else. It seems like a uniquely American type of neurosis, the Underground Man type of paralysis — endless self-analysis, self-diagnosis, performing suffering of its own perceived irrelevance. At the same time, formal ambition seems to be perceived as elitist, which is ridiculous — that, plus all the institutionalisation of literature, as if it can be “produced”, gives away strong Soviet rhetoric vibes. The actual formally ambitious works by, say, Gaddis, Gass, Theroux, etc. are rather marginalised and considered “unreadable”, at least definitely not “role models”, which is ironic because these are the works that make literature Literature, that actually innovate, while in Russia for example, the experimental/formal tendency is much closer to the main current, and the prestige is there as well, in addition to conservative and “accessible” forms. Like take Sorokin, for example, he’s very much a public mainstream literary figure, and he writes about coprophagia, rape, cannibalism, etc. in forms that aren’t remotely close to the Russian 19th century novel, even though, if you read him, you understand clearly that he could write one if he wanted to. I can mostly judge from Substack, of course, but reflecting on what I see, no wonder “we should get people to read literature again” is so loud. Tell me, why would an abstract person go to literature if it offers nothing extraordinary compared to cinema or TV, just the same stories but printed? What can a book do now that a limited series couldn’t do better in six hours? Or a film in two? As a result you get a sort of “centrist” literature which tries to cater to the middle between those who’d rather watch a movie and won’t pick up your book, no matter how hard you try — it’s just suboptimal for a person who just wants to be entertained, a fair desire, though; and to those who actually are passionate about literature and challenging works — but the result is it caters to no one fully. It’s not the 19th century any more, not even the 20th he-he. Literature isn’t the only medium any more. It’s a competition now, so why not play cards only you have? One could say reading is boring compared to Netflix or TikTok, so why would anyone read a book at all? Especially when they also say to you that audiobooks aren’t reading.

So, I can’t say I’m “interested” in Anglo-American literature as a separate domain, or to be fair even in Russian literature, or any other literature in a national or language sense. I’m interested in literature in a cosmopolitan sense, meaning a great book is a great book, and we’re lucky to have it translated (if it’s done well). However, currently my preferences and interests appear to be more aligned with European modernism and the 20th-21st centuries Eastern European literature, and do not align so well with Anglo-American literature “at large”, though I’m actively discovering authors who would and am very much open to that. There’s a certain indescribable affinity that I feel towards certain authors, literary soulmates of sorts, and that’s the most important aspect of it. Some national literature cultures are more populated with such authors, some less, is all. I don’t know what exactly you meant to cover by the “Anglo-American” umbrella, but I’d add that my favourite English language authors happened to be Irish, and favourite American writers are from South America.

15.What accounts for why Russians — or some Russians — take this stuff so much more seriously than anybody else seems to?

I’d say it’s the opposite, actually! And I don’t think “than anybody else seems to” is true. I notice writers of Anglo-American literature, on the contrary, treat it too seriously, hence the neurosis and paralysis I mentioned. Probably most Russian writers are chill about “the social function of literature” or “the purpose of Arts” or “writing a new Great Novel”, I don’t think anybody fancies a verbal polemic about any of those, they just do what they are passionate about, and nobody can tell them how to do it, there’s no institutionalised belief of what the literature is, no MFA or whatever, and the majority of literary figures of today had education that had nothing to do with literature, or went to get a degree in literature, which doesn’t actually teach you how to write books (as far as I know). I don’t think there’s a definition of “literary” at all. Literature in Russia is exactly like pure mathematics; it exists for its own sake. Sporadically it happens to have an impact on culture and society, predict an event or explain it, but it always seems to be a sub-product, rather than the initially intended goal.

16.Tell us about Deleted Scenes from the Bestselling Utopian Novel.

It’s a book I self-published not so long ago. Its world is inspired by contemporary Russian reality, particularly after the war has started, and largely alludes to it, even quotes it sometimes, despite happening in a fictional surreal world. There’s no single story, but there’s a single setting — Novo Tsarstvo, an authoritarian island-country with a dictator who looks like a desiccated scrotum and incites violence against everyone, including, of course, its citizens. The first part of the book begins with a protagonist witnessing their neighbour being assaulted, which then leads to a psychological spiral and a series of surreal and violent events. The second part is a set of short stories about different characters inhabiting the same world, many are children (coincidentally I do love writing a surreal non-mawkish child POV), and we see the same world from their perspective. It’s a book about the nature of violence and truth, and how ordinary people survive in the world that’s inherently against them.

There are personified images of propaganda — a television in human form who knocks on your door in the morning — as well as personified thoughts, literal demons, some formal fun in the way how the protagonist’s state of mind is represented on the page, a play chapter, some typographical madness, dream sequences, but also a lot of emotional tenderness and trauma. A lot remains unsaid and happens somewhere in the background; the chapter ordering supports that. The novel’s nature is fragmentary, but there’s a unifying principle + the setting + the emotional core — I present it as a mosaic, a set of episodes deleted by the editors from the “bestselling utopian novel” attempted to published in the world of the novel.

17.What was the experience like of writing it?

I wanted to write “a novel” but failed, a novel in a traditional sense at least; the type of episodic novel I ended up with is pretty common in Russian literature. I outlined it, and had maybe a half written, but didn’t like it because it felt constructed and “fake”. Then, when I was writing a chapter where the protagonist throws their TV out of the window, the story took a rather unexpected turn and changed everything. I deleted a lot from the drafts after that. At the same time I was writing short stories, at least once a month, and given what I cared about in the world at that moment, they all were on the same or similar themes as that novel. At some point, I even realised that they happen in the same world and started doubling down on that, also adding the “deleted scenes” from my drafts and turning them into short stories. Once I felt “I had enough” I thought that with some editing I can organise all those, including the first one, into one coherent story, which I did, and I think it worked. The narrative often follows poetic and dream logic rather than a narrative linear logic, and many chapters start with “A lurid dream there was” refrain, which further supports that.

I’m happy about the result and don’t feel alienation towards the book and the stories like I do feel for some of my previous works, which is a good sign. I was afraid the book wouldn’t work for the international reader who isn’t into the Russian context because there are many allusions and quotes, as I mentioned, but it did. I’m glad I can say that I got warm and thoughtful reviews from all around the world.

I wrote on how it was written here and here, if anyone’s curious.

18.How can readers read it?

Everywhere, literally, or at least in many places. It’s distributed world-wide by major online booksellers, so it’s worth checking out your favourite one. If anyone has difficulties of getting a copy or would like a signed one with some bonus bookmarks, they can DM or email me, and we’ll sort it out!

Interview conducted by Sam Kahn