“An Element of Imagination”: Olga Slavnikova’s 2017
Every so often, I come across a book so idiosyncratic I have to write about it just to work out what it is I’ve read. A book strange and powerful, but whose power is difficult to locate or specify. Sometimes it’s hard even to be sure whether the book can be called ‘good’ in any meaningful way. By writing about it, I can get some thoughts in order, and see where they lead. And as such, I want to take a look here at Olga Slavnikova’s 2017.
Slavnikova’s book won the 2006 Russian Booker Prize and was translated into English by Marian Schwartz in 2010. It’s nominally science fiction, being set in the titular year and featuring a few relatively minor advances in technology as part of its setting. It reads much more like fantasy, though. It’s set in a part of Russia not to be located on a map, but also not entirely fictional, and it’s haunted by a folktale of a mountain-spirit. And, at a certain point, history begins to repeat itself for reasons more thematic than rational: an irruption of the surreal and dreamlike into the slow-moving plot.
The book begins with its main character, Krylov, a gemcutter, seeing off a professional acquaintance, Professor Anfilogov, at a train station. There Krylov meets a woman he comes to call Tanya, and the two begin an affair in which they deliberately keep their real names and backgrounds secret from each other. As Anfilogov finds a deposit of precious gems far off in the mountains, history begins to repeat itself: re-enactments of the Russian Revolution take on a life of their own, causing confused violence and incidentally separating Krylov and Tanya. Krylov has to turn to his ex-wife, Tamara, who has become rich by selling a new approach to funerals. Violence rises as Krylov seeks Tanya and Anfilogov tries to get back home, with rumours of his discovery preceding him.
