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Yakov's Ladder, a novel by Ludmila Ulitskaya (2015)
2016 Big Book Award (3rd place) and Reader’s Choice Award
German rights are handled by Christina Links:
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At first glance, Yacov’s Ladder perfectly embodies the generic definition of a “family saga.” The story of several generations of Osetskys, who were originally from Kiev and then transplanted to Moscow, spans an entire century, from 1911 to 2011. The family saga is, however, no more than a shell, a shapely vessel chosen by the author in her search for answers to the questions posed inexorably and unrelentingly by literature and philosophy since the beginning of human existence: to what degree is the human individual free or unfree? How do circumstances, DNA, or history combine to determine or condition the individual personality?
The novel revolves around two axes, Nora and her grandfather, Yakov Osetsky. Nora and Yakov have seen each other only once, in the mid-1950s, when Nora was just a child, and Yakov’s life was already nearing its end. The encounter was no more than a fleeting episode for both of them. A true meeting of minds and souls occurred only much later, in 2011, when Nora had already emerged from the commotion and tumult of everyday existence and the course of her life was winding down, and she read the diaries of her grandfather, as well as his family correspondence (which covered many decades), and the dossier of Yakov Osetsky from the KGB archives.
From the first page, the reader is thrust headlong into the masterfully depicted world of the main character, Nora Osetsky. Nearly all the people who play an important role in her life appear in the narrative in quick succession: her son Yorik, theater director Tengiz Kuziani, her mother Amalia, her father Henrik, her grandmother Marusya, and an “occasional” husband Victor. The people are enmeshed in themes and objects: theater, the career of a set designer, books, sugar tongs, an old blouse trimmed with an ancient Egyptian motif, and an osier chest holding the family archives.
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Modern Day Patericon, by Maya Kuzherskaya (2005)
2006 Ivan Bunin Prize
Kucherskaya's honest and humorous account of life within the modern Russian Orthodox community, including short biographies of numerous batyushkas (low ranking priests), sometimes fictitious, but presenting easily recognizable prototypes all the same, have made her popular beyond the bounds of church circles. Kucherskaya is a master at describing them. The images of priests and parishioners that she creates are sometimes far from sainthood. Among her characters, you can find “manager” priests, “superman” priests and even one “cannibal” priest. They teach their parishioners in a way that has a Zen Buddhist element to it. One calls his followers “an academy of idiots” for hanging on his every word. Another induces a parishioner, whose wife has been coming home late, to feign drunkenness to show her how distraught he is with her absence. Surprisingly, the wife takes a renewed interest in her “drinking” husband and begins to come home earlier. She never discovered that, on the priest’s advice, her husband had collected empty vodka bottles and cigarette butts from the street and then strewn them all over the apartment before she came home. “Father Konstantin never laughed as much in his whole life,” Kucherskaya writes at the end of the story.
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Kucherskaya’s book is also full of overzealous female parishioners, whom the author does not treat with much sympathy. “If only one of them had killed someone!” a batyushka says in one of her stories, after listening to a long line of empty confessions from women reporting that they had eaten sardines on a Friday, or some other trifle. “What conclusion can we draw from this story? The girl was insane,” is how she wraps up a story of a Literary Institute graduate who idolized her priest so much that she made him the censor of all her writings, before drowning herself in the Moscow River after becoming disillusioned with writing.
“This is one of my criticisms of church subculture,” Kucherskaya said. “Sometimes, people there confine themselves to a small space and write the word “vanity” on the window to the outside world. The young church girls often call this penance. It has nothing in common with real penance, however.”
When the book was first released by the secular Vremya publisher, readers’ reactions were enthusiastic. But, when the second edition was published by Biblio-Polis, whose books are sold in Orthodox churches, the tone of the reactions shifted with the audience. A church newspaper in St.Petersburg even suggested that Kucherskaya was under the spell of “hostile demons.” “Kucherskaya is an alien, who came to our circle accidentally or, more likely, with an evil purpose,” an article in the religious newspaper Pravoslavnyi St.Peterburg said. “Our joys appear stupid to her, while our troubles are a laughing matter for her. This is just unbearable!”
Fortunately, Kucherskaya wasn’t turned into an Orthodox Russian version of Salman Rushdie. Many monks, nuns and regular churchgoers rushed to her defense. “An honest reader will quickly remember many examples similar to those described in the book,” one of her defenders, who identified herself as a nun by the name of Yekaterina, wrote in a letter to the media. “For this reader, Kucherskaya’s book is just one more reason to think about the illnesses which still plague our church.”