Slava: After the Fall by Pierre-Henry Gomont

First published in France in 2022; published in translation by Europe Comics on January 25, 2023

This graphic novel is set in the 1990s. Russia has transitioned from a country of corrupt government officials controlling the means of production to one of corrupt oligarchs controlling a privatized economy. Slava Segalov “grew up in a world where ‘salesman’ meant ‘scammer’.” He aspired to be a starving artist but, after he tired of starving, joined his childhood friend, Dimitri Lavrin, in the business of  looting abandoned Soviet buildings. Dimitri steals goods to sell to Russian consumers who are eager to own the things they always coveted. While Slava was once a student of philosophy and art, Dimitri — a lifelong grifter — is teaching Slava to be a capitalist (i.e., thief).

Slava and Dimitri are driving a van full of looted goods when a band of highway robbers forces the van off the road. An armed woman named Nina rescues them for the bargain price of 500 rubles. She takes them to an abandoned resort that Dimitri regards as ripe for looting. Nina is squatting there with her father (Volodya) and doesn’t appreciate the concept of being looted in exchange for saving Dimitri’s life. Volodya, on the other hand, wants to make a deal with Dimitri even if he’s a grifter because “We’re Russians. Racketeering’s in our blood. Before, during, and after communism. It courses through our veins as surely as vodka.”

Nina is squatting in the resort because the mine that employed her is being privatized. Dimitri understands (and admires) the investor’s scheme to acquire the mine dirt cheap in exchange for lavish promises of high-paying jobs, followed by closing the mine and selling its assets for a tidy profit. The miners are less sanguine when Dimitri explains the investor’s scheme, but Nina’s boyfriend proposes a grift of his own to benefit the miners.

The story takes the four central characters on an eventful journey through the mountains and villages of a corrupt land. Slava begins to question Dimitri’s cynical nature. Dimitri believes Slava has only acquired morality because he is enchanted by Nina. As a prototypical Russian, Volodya solves problems by drinking and fighting. Nina is attracted to Slava but doesn’t want to betray her boyfriend.

The story is amusing but dark, rooted in the pain of ordinary people who have little hope of improving their lives because they are part of a system that does not value ordinary people. The story creates satisfying tension as the characters clash and unite in pursuit of separate and common agendas. While the ending is satisfying, it doesn’t avoid the harsh reality of life in an empire ruled by crime.

Pierre-Henry Gomont’s art is somewhere between cartoonish and stylized realism. Think Doonesbury with a bit more detail. The story is narrated in the margins between rows of panels. Dialog and thought balloons sometimes rely on a picture — a raging fire or a man swinging from a noose — rather than words. I’m no art critic, but I thought the art made a significant contribution to the story, as should be the case in a graphic novel.

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Selected Short Stories by Leo Tolstoy

Published by Dover (Thrift Editions) on December 13, 2017

The stories in this collection are not Tolstoy’s best (“How Much Land Does a Man Need?” and “The Death of Ivan Ilyitch” are examples of excellent stories that aren’t included here) but reading Tolstoy is never time wasted. The Dover blurb calls some of these stories “hard to find,” so the volume might be of more value to a Tolstoy completest than to a casual reader. The stories appear in chronological order and the later stories reflect a mature talent that had not yet developed in the earlier stories.

The narrator of the “The Raid” is the early version of an embedded journalist. He is a civilian who wants to learn something of war, and to that end seeks out a captain who is on a campaign in the Caucasus. The narrator and the captain discuss theories of bravery and cowardice. The narrator also contemplates the reasons for war and wonders how it can coexist with nature. The story is interesting but, even for 1853, far from groundbreaking in its philosophical explorations.

The narrator of “The Snow-Storm” undertakes a perilous journey by carriage to the next town in the middle of a blizzard, when whiteout conditions make it impossible to stay on the road. The driver seems to vacillate between an acceptance of fate, whatever that might turn out to be, and a desire to avoid death on the frozen steppe. The story is notable for its vivid descriptions and contrasts; less so for the story it tells, which is less observant of human nature than Tolstoy’s later work.

“The Bear-Hunt,” like “The Snow-Storm,” is based on an actual event in Tolstoy’s life. It contains the memorable line (spoken by the narrator’s hunting companion), “He’s eating the master! He’s eating the master!” The moral of the story is, if you insist on shooting a bear, you’d better kill it, because you don’t want to make an enemy of an angry bear.

Zhílan is on his way home from war in the Caucasus when he is captured by Tartars and becomes “A Prisoner in the Caucasus.” The Tartars hold Zhílan and another Russian for ransom. While awaiting a ransom that he knows will never come, Zhílan befriends a Tartar child while plotting his escape. The story is again based on a real incident in Tolstoy’s life and is notable for the fact that his captors (presumably religious since they adhere to Muslim prayer rituals) are generally quite decent to Zhílan until his first escape attempt, although that may be because he only has value to them as a living hostage.

“Two Old Men” decide to take a pilgrimage on foot to Jerusalem before they die, putting their affairs in the hands of their family members. Along the way, as seems fitting for a religious pilgrimage, one man stays behind to feed a starving family, finally returning home when he is nearly out of money. The other completes the journey but returns to find that his family has not managed well in his absence. The friend who failed to go to Jerusalem, on the other hand, is doing very well. Tolstoy’s point, expressly articulated in the last sentence, is that making a show of worshipping God is less important for the soul than expressing your love for humanity by doing good to others. That will always be a timely message. This is my favorite story in the volume.

“The Godson” is a parable about a boy who goes in search of his godfather, is told not to enter a room (which, of course, he enters), and is tasked with lessening the evil in the world as punishment for the evil he causes. The lesson the boy learns is that “evil cannot be removed by evil.” Another timely message, as is the lesson about how to rid the world of evil (hint: making a show of righteous piety won’t do it).

A boy who is berated by his father commits the transgression suggested by the title of “A Forged Coupon.” At the urging of a friend, he cheats a shopkeeper who cheats a peasant who later commits crimes of his own that indirectly cause others to commit crimes, including murder. One point of “The Forged Coupon” is that rich people believe themselves to be above the law and are often treated that way by the government, while the poor people they abuse are punished disproportionately when they are driven to lawless action. Some things never change. The novella’s second part is about guilt, redemption, and the vanity of judgment. Just as the crime in part one had unintended consequences, part two suggests that good acts can cause good fortune that the actor never contemplates. The first half of the novella is riveting, while the second half is a bit preachy.

“After the Dance” starts as an old man’s remembrance of a woman with whom he danced at a ball when he was young. The woman also danced with her father, a colonel, and the young man admired the father’s obvious love for her. But in the morning the young man sees the colonel beating a soldier who tried to desert and cannot reconcile the colonel’s brutality with the tenderness he saw the night before. The observation prompts the young man, and the reader, to wonder whether an inability to understand the colonel’s duality renders the young man unfit for military service.

The shortest story in the volume is my second favorite. “Alyosha the Pot” is a hard-working but dull-witted young man who is so dependable that many people in a merchant’s home come to rely on his labor. When the young cook, Ustinia, befriends him, he is shocked and worried that her friendship might interfere with his work. Yet he is also pleased. “He felt for the first time in his life that he — not his services, but he himself — was necessary to another human being.” They want to wed but the merchant who employs them does not approve of married servants (particularly women, who might get pregnant), and Alyosha’s father, who collects all of Alyosha’s wages, forbids it. The story’s ending is tragic, although Alyosha doesn’t regard it that way, because he is content with the knowledge that he has done no harm in his simple life, and that everything works out for the best. Layers of complexity lurk beneath a simple story that invites readers to ask whether Alyosha, in his simplicity, understands the big picture better than deep thinkers, or whether Alyosha, in his simplicity, does not appreciate how those who exploit him have robbed him of the richness his life could have had.

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Sisters of the Cross by Alexei Remizov

Published in Russia in 1910; published in translation by Columbia University Press on December 19, 2017

Sisters of the Cross is a novel of dark themes. Life is brutal and unfair. Love robs men of their senses. People who hold power wield it arbitrarily. “Man is born into the world and is already condemned”; sentenced to death on an unknown date with no hope of reprieve. But Alexei Remizov does offer a mild prescription of relief from the darkness: “If people studied each other carefully and took note of one another, if they were all granted eyes with which to see, then only a heart of stone would be able to bear all the horror and mystery of life. Or perhaps none of us would need a heart of stone if only individuals took note of one another.” But what are the odds of that happening?

Remizov takes note of the characters in Sisters of the Cross, seeing them through the eyes of Marakulin Piotr Alekseevich. Marakulin is unexpectedly fired from his job in Petersburg because of a bookkeeping error, perhaps caused by his kind-hearted willingness to issue paychecks to people who had not earned them. He spends his savings and sells his property, moves to a smaller room in his rooming house (the Burkov), and falls ill before he comes to see himself as liberated. His life needs no purpose, he decides; it is enough “just to see, just to hear, just to feel.” But is it?

Much of Marakulin’s attention is on the other characters who live in the Burkov. They include a woman who loves religion and the sea, a clown and his artistic brother, a woman who reads cards and is living under an unfair curse, a teacher at the girls’ high school, and two students, Vera and Verochka. Vera is a student who aspires to be a doctor while Verochka is a theater student who claims to be a brilliant actress but who is “somehow always saying different things, and you couldn’t fathom where the real truth was and what was just her imagination.” Vera and Verochka are later joined by Verushka, a 15-year-old orphan who has experienced enough abuse to last a lifetime. All of the residents have sad tales and, to some degree, are living unfortunate lives. They come and go from the rooming house as the novel moves forward, but Verochka eventually leaves for good, much to Marakulin’s regret, given the obsession that he develops for her.

Marakulin is obsessed in a different way with a general’s widow who lives in one of the better rooms in the Burkov. Obsessed as in, he wants to kill her. Marakulin nearly drives himself mad with the thought that she, “in rude good health, carefree, sin-free, and immortal, a vessel of God’s choosing, the louse, was sleeping the sweetest of sleeps.” He rejects that kind of life, “life as an absolute entitlement,” a life “with no aim, simply seeing, hearing, and feeling: the life of a louse.” He wants to feel supreme joy, and comes to believe that he can only achieve joy with the absent Verochka, “the source of his life.”

The novel’s most tormented character is Marakulin’s mother Zhenia. We learn in Marakulin’s backstory that Zhenia was used repeatedly by men who were blinded by lust. Zhenia responded by slashing crosses into her flesh with a razor.

While the arbitrary unfairness of life is a dominant theme, it is linked to “wandering Holy Russia, so meek in her wandering beggary, Holy Russia, engirdled by poverty in its pilgrim’s belt from the Bogoliubsky monastery, Holy Russia, so humble, long-suffering, and patient, who will not make her own coffin, but can only build a funeral pyre and burn herself upon it.” To Marakulin, suffering is a way of life in Russia. It is inevitable and, at least for those of unfortunate birth, unavoidable.

Readers looking for an affirmation of faith in the justice of the universe won’t find it in Sisters of the Cross. The novel’s value lies in its intricate characterizations, both of Marakulin and of the other Burkov residents. The story is bleak, and the bleakness is emphasized by Remizov’s repetition of dark phrases and sentences (and occasional paragraphs), but life for most people in Remizov’s Russia was bleak, and Sisters of the Cross is true to that sad reality.

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The State Counsellor by Boris Akunin

First published in Russia in 1998; published in translation in Great Britain in 1999; published by Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press on July 4, 2017

The State Counsellor is a man named Erast Petrovich Fandorin. The novel, set in Tsarist Russia, is the sixth in a series by Boris Akunin.

Fandorin has been assigned responsibility for the safety of General Khrapov in Moscow. The revolutionaries blame Khrapov for the brutal flogging and suicide of a young woman before he was made the Governor of Siberia. Khrapov, who claims it wasn’t his fault and doesn’t understand all the fuss about “an ordinary bourgeois girl,” has been hidden away in Siberia for his own protection, but the time has come to return him to Moscow. His return is brief, however, as a revolutionary assassin who goes by the name Green enters the train, posing as Fandorin, and dispatches Khrapov in the opening pages.

The real Fandorin is briefly arrested, but it soon becomes clear that the murderer was in imposter. It then becomes Fandorin’s duty to find the villain who killed the villain. Only a few people in various security roles knew that Fandorin was assigned to protect Khrapov, so Fandorin begins his inquiry by asking whether any of those might have leaked the information.

A seductress named Diana becomes a key character. She adds flavor to the novel by expounding on the weaknesses of men and the various ways in which women can exploit those weaknesses. A seductress named Esfir, clearly sympathetic to the revolution, wastes no time in taking Fandorin to bed. Modern women are a true mystery to poor Fandorin, but they are considered outrageous by high society women (even as they are admired by high society men).

The novel explores the utility of terrorism as an instrument of revolution — in this case, to spark a revolution that will overthrow Tsarist rule. Green is the novel’s philosopher of terror. But the plot explores the corruption of power and the ruthlessness of people who seize it. The mystery involves the identity of the person who is betraying the police by helping Green, and while the truth is telegraphed in a way that makes it easy to guess the betrayer’s identity before it is revealed, I prefer that to mystery stories that plant no clues at all.

Fandorin is an interesting, stuttering detective who is forced to cope with a doomed political structure that hampers his ability to do his job. The story is cerebral, but it has spurts of action that keep it lively. Life in Tsarist Russia is well imagined. I haven’t read other entries in the series but it is easy to enjoy The State Counsellor as a stand-alone mystery novel.

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The Genome by Sergei Lukyanenko

First published in Russia in 1999; published in translation by Open Road Media on December 2, 2014

The Genome begins as Alex Romanov is discharged from a hospital on Quicksilver Pit. Alex is a master-pilot. He is also a genetically engineered "spesh" with a modified body and enhanced aptitudes and abilities. One of the modifications prevents him from experiencing love but that is offset by enhanced integrity, loyalty, and kindness. That's one of many interesting touches in this surprising novel.

Stuck on Quicksilver Pit after an accident that nearly killed him, Alex helps out a spesh named Kim O'Hara, a 14-year-old girl who is about to go through metamorphosis. Kim is carrying a stolen crystal, the contents of which are not immediately clear. She appears to be a fighter-spech but she also has a different set of spesh characteristics that are revealed about midway through the novel. Her true engineered nature is surprising and pretty cool.

Alex needs money. With an unbelievable stroke of luck he finds an unbelievably good job as a ship's captain -- unbelievable to Alex, who knows there must be a catch but doesn't know what it is. Sergei Lukyanenko writes some imaginative scenes about Alex bonding with his new ship, which becomes part of Alex (or Alex becomes part of the ship) when he interfaces with it. He also gives an original spin to the process of crew selection. The five crew members Alex selects (most have been genetically engineered for their jobs) give Lukyanenko the opportunity to mix together a number of conflicting personalities.

The universe Lukyanenko imagines is populated by alien races as well as humans who have colonized other worlds. A matched pair of politically important aliens are passengers on Alex's first voyage. This raises themes of racism and xenophobia that will be familiar to science fiction fans, but Lukyanenko handles them well. The morality of cloning is another familiar theme. One of Alex's crew considers herself a sworn enemy of the aliens and another hates clones, again creating the kind of conflicts that add interest to a story. By the novel's midpoint, something eventful has happened that turns The Genome into a whodunit. Solving the mystery (potentially with the help of a genetically engineered detective who calls himself Sherlock Holmes) may be the only way Alex can avert an interstellar war.

Lukyanenko adds a number of original and creative details that contribute to the story's sense of authenticity. I particularly liked the descriptions of piloting a ship. I'm not quite sure that I buy the logic used to expose the bad guy -- it isn't all that Holmesian -- but the story moves so quickly that it's easy to overlook its faults.

To a degree, The Genome endeavors to be an offbeat exploration of love. That aspect of the story is a bit heavy-handed, particularly at the end, but the novel never becomes a trashy sf romance. The Genome is also a philosophical exploration of free will and the morality of genetic programming that prevents the programmed from choosing a different kind of life. While none of those themes reveal fresh thinking, I give Lukyanenko credit for adding some meaningful thought to an entertaining mystery/space opera/action novel.

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