Oblivion

January 18, 2016
Lebedev's debut novel evokes, in powerful poetic prose, the Soviet prison work camps of the Arctic north, posing a heartfelt challenge to those who prefer to forget. Like the author, the novel's unnamed narrator is a Russian geologist with a passion for words. The story follows his attempt to uncover the past of an old blind neighbor he calls Grandfather II. No one knows much about Grandfather II, who keeps mostly to himself, his deep attachment to the narrator one notable exception. When, as a boy, the narrator balks at his first haircut, Grandfather II takes charge of the scissors. When the boy encounters a frothing dog, Grandfather II beats it with his cane. When the boy needs a transfusion, Grandfather II gives his blood. After Grandfather II dies, the narrator finds a letter that prompts a journey to Siberia, where he observes cold white expanses scarred by logged forests, used-up mines, deserted barracks, neglected roads, abandoned vehicles. Grandfather II's past is rooted in this landscape: he played a key role at a prison camp quarry. The narrator facing the facts of Grandpa II's life serves as a metaphor for Russians dealing with their sullied heritage. The determination of Kulak laborers, the desperation of a fugitive prisoner, the desolation of an empty library, the tragedy of a boy and his whistle, are among the many images capturing the impoverished state of the land, the people, and the national spirit, left by an unjust and undeniable part of Russian history.

Starred review from October 15, 2015
Journeying across the tundra on a search through his past, a young Russian is emotionally undone by horrific remnants of gulag atrocities--and the ease with which those crimes were systematically wiped from the national consciousness. "All the executions, all the murders were forgotten, an entire era had settled to the bottom of memory," laments the unnamed narrator, a child of perestroika. The story pivots on his relationship with the blind dacha neighbor who raised him as his guardian. A coldly detached man with a mysterious past (he claims he was a bookkeeper), "Grandfather II" projects the quality of "being dead inside, unconnected to the world." The narrator, who as a boy received a blood transfusion from him after suffering a life-threatening dog bite, has always been uncomfortable carrying the old man's unearthly essence inside him. That becomes an even greater burden when he learns who Grandfather II was and inherits the things he left behind. Eschewing dialogue, the book packs a wicked emotional punch through fierce poetic imagery and long, relentless streams of consciousness. Real-life history provides an endless supply of disturbing images: skulls, stacked corpses, permafrozen bodies, trucks "carrying bones covered with a red-stained tarp." For the narrator, nature's capacity for turning "monstrous"--as it does with a lake that looks like Lenin's profile--is equally unsettling. By placing us in inhumanity's long, shiver-inducing shadow, and opening a fresh window on the state's efforts to wipe the gulag era from history, Lebedev takes his place beside Solzhenitsyn and other great writers who have refused to abide by silence. Lebedev's courageous and devastating first novel, published in Russia in 2011, applies modern insight and poetic force to atrocities past and to his country's unspoken campaign to remove them from history.

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Starred review from September 15, 2015

Opening in stately fashion and unfolding ever faster with fierce, intensive elegance, this first novel discloses the weight of Soviet history and its consequences. A young man who as a boy owed his life to a reserved neighbor he calls Grandfather II grows curious about the man's past and finally unearths his connection to the terrible prison-camp system barb-wired throughout the country. The language is precise yet lyrical, with much revealed through dreams, as if the Soviet reality were otherwise too awful to touch. VERDICT Highly recommended for anyone serious about literature or history.

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