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Celestial Express, a novel by Kirill Kobrin, 2019
Rights sold: Russia - NLO
Shortlisted for the 2019 NOS Literary Award
Loosely modelled on Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, the plot of this novel centres around a journey undertaken by a diverse group of figures and two deaths that take place among them within the first couple of days. The setting is the enclosed space of a train car on a solemnly inaugurated direct railroad connection between the Chinese city “X.” and London, but the narrator’s inclination for letting his mind wander freely takes the reader all over the world, jumping between China and Europe, the past and the present, etc. In fact, the story itself doesn’t map more than the first three days of the journey. The chief question of a detective story – who the murderer is – ceases to be important in the light of the musings that play and interweave as the train makes its way across the vast expanse of the continent.
The reader’s guided through most of the novel by the first-person narrative of one of the travellers, a well-read intellectual who enjoys hearing the sound of his inner voice and lets it take him into the farthest corners of his mind (and the world), while remaining slightly skeptical to the ideas it suggests. He presents the scene in a camera-like style, zooming in, describing details meticulously, often letting them distract and inspire him into a digression in which he combines what he knows with sometimes fantastic and far-fetched ideas, constructing a whole system of belief before returning to the narrative. The narrative itself is pushed to the background ever more as it provides merely a scheme for the narrator’s reflections and loosely flowing associations.
The subjects the narrator’s philosophical musings touch upon include: alcohol-drinking traditions around the world; the fact that China represents the future and Europe the past, making the train journey a return from the future into the past; the idea that at some point, apart from “the present”, the distant past will be the only thing that ever truly existed and everything between the distant past and the present will be lost with each new digital system replacing the old one, etc. Halfway through the book the reader is treated to an essay on hell and a thorough analysis of its various forms.
An “opera” performed by the characters appears towards the end, using excerpts from ancient Chinese poetry, which provides another artistic adaptation of the events on the train inserted in the adaptation that is the novel itself.
In the author’s own words, “it is a sort of late modernist (but not so-called ‘postmodernist’!) mixture of Agatha Christie and Alain Robbe-Grillet with a pinch of J. G. Ballard”. A year after its publication, the events of 2020 have imparted unexpected relevance to this novel, not only due to China being the starting point of the journey it describes, but chiefly thanks to its treatment of human isolation and its possible consequences, as well as toying with the grim and funny scenarios of the future of humankind.
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Sergei Prokofiev, a biography, by Igor Vishnevetsky (2009, NF)
Rights sold: Russia - Molodaya Gvardia, World English - GLAGOSLAV
“A classical composer is a mad person composing music, which is not clear to his own generation”, the brilliant Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, whose 120th birth anniversary will be marked on April 23rd, used to say. However, the date itself is Prokofiev’s imagination, as the author of his biography that was published in 2009 in the Life of Remarkable People series, Igor Vishnevetsky, who is a poet, a prose-writer and a culturologist, says.
Read more..."Officially, we celebrate Prokofiev’s birthday, which is the product of his imagination, on April 23rd, while according to the official documents, it should be celebrated on April 27th. Igor Vishnevetsky said in an interview with the Voice of Russia."
One of the old myths was that Sergei Prokofiev was a person, who was seriously interested in nothing at all in his life, except music and his literary work. Let’s add chess to that list too. Meanwhile, Prokofiev kept well abreast of politics. And, which you might find surprising enough, though he was a representative of the avant-garde trend in music and a composer who was committed to radical left views regarding the art, as a politician, he was not a left-winger. Shortly after the 1917 revolution in Russia, Prokofiev left it and settled at first in the USA and then in France. Altogether, he spent 18 years abroad. True, parallel with his performances in America, Japan and Europe, he visited Russia with concerts 3 times. Saying that avangardism implies left-wing politics, Igor Vishnevetsky presents the following proofs.
"Prokofiev’s position on the 1917 to 18 events in Russia was clear-cut. He strongly disapproved of what occurred in Russia and regarded the revolutionary events in the country as a catastrophe of cosmic proportions. In an interview with an American newspaper he said that he was strongly positive about the intervention in the Russian Civil War. The knowledge of the above-mentioned destroys the customary image of Prokofiev and at the same time throws light on the circumstances he was guided by when he returned to Russia. Besides, what he said in the interview provides us food to understand why he wrote such music - that very music he wrote after his return to Russia."
The terms for the return of Sergei Prokofiev to Russia were, firstly, his expressing official regret for the interview to the foreign press during the Civil War and of course , his promise not to do anything of the kind in the future. Prokofiev was sure that he would be more in place and more popular at home. And he proved to be right. The great pianist and the brilliant performer of Prokofiev’s works, Svyatoslav Richter, describing Sergei Prokofiev who returned to Russia in 1936 to begin a new life there, says: “Once I saw him walking on the Arbat Street, and there was a challenging force in him.”
The “new life” of Sergei Prokofiev, the laureate of several Stalin prizes, was not cloudless in Russia. There’re still some blank spots in his biography. Of course, his 8 operas, including “War and Peace”, based on Leo Tolstoy’s novel, are well known. His 8 ballets, including “Romeo and Juliet” that was staged many times are well known as well. All his 7 symphonies and all his 9 instrumental concerts, and also his cantatas and numerous chamber pieces are often performed today. “And still, there’s something in Prokofiev’s biography we know nothing about”, Igor Vishnevetsky says.
(с) text: VOR
Table of contents
Part I. FACING THE EAST. 1891-1927
1. Childhood in Ukraine: the Scythian Wakes Up (1891-1905)
2. The 'enfant terrible' in St.Petersburg Conservatory of Music and After It (1905-1917)
3. Beginning of Odissey, or Road Towards the Sun (1918-1921)
4. Years of Wanderings. Art as Magic (1922-1927)
Part II. BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. 1927-1945
1. Between the Land of Bolsheviks and Eurasia (1927-1930)
2. Russian Parisian at Home and Abroad (1931-1935)
3. Experimenting within Limits: Prokofiev and Soviet Music (1936-1940)
4. The War (1941-1945)
Part III. IN CAPTIVITY. (1946-1953)
1. After-War Euphoria (1946-1947)
2. Catastrophe: 1948
3. Years of Isolation (1949-1953)
4. Epilogue: After Prokofiev
Appendix I. Chronological table of Sergei Prokofiev's life and art.
Appendix II. Bibliography.