Andrei Volos: Hurramabad

[abecedarian]

I'm having a rough time with this novel, so I'm hopimg to get some help here. I understand that its about the fallout from the collapse of the old
Soviet Union, and how "Russians" left behind might be more considered "foriegners" but I'm having a hard time following a plot line and determining who is the main character here. Maybe this isn't the greatest thing to read wihen one is siffering from either a head cold or allergies from hades..

 

[beer good]

It's not strictly a novel with ONE plot and ONE main character, it's a series of connected short stories that interweave in theme, place and occasionally in cast - you'd probably do well to write down names as they pop up, I wish I had. A few characters turn up more than once, others are main characters in only their little story arc and then disappear again... The main character, to paraphrase "Blackadder", is the mother tongue.

Nice to see you're reading this, btw. I absolutely loved it and I hope you get into it once the cold lets up...

 

[abecedarian]

It's not strictly a novel with ONE plot and ONE main character, it's a series of connected short stories that interweave in theme, place and occasionally in cast - you'd probably do well to write down names as they pop up, I wish I had. A few characters turn up more than once, others are main characters in only their little story arc and then disappear again... The main character, to paraphrase "Blackadder", is the mother tongue.

Nice to see you're reading this, btw. I absolutely loved it and I hope you get into it once the cold lets up...

I thought maybe it was a bunch of connected stories..and I think what has kept me going is the neat way the writer uses the "mother language" and its various nuances to portray the problem of who is a 'native' or not.

 

[beer good]

Also, the further you get towards the present date (and Volos' own experiences, I assume), the more interconnected the stories become.

Another main character, btw, is The War. There's always a war around the corner, though they may give it different names. Note that none - or at least very few - of the stories are easily fixed in time; they're always dated "five years after the war" or something to that effect. The consequence of which, at least for me, is that it becomes very easy to really get caught up in every person's story since you don't have a distance of "this happened 70 years ago"; it happens NOW, to someone, somewhere. That, plus the incredible detail of the prose - you can smell the tea and gunsmoke - is what really sold me on "Hurramabad", I think. Snapshots of a country that don't add up to a complete image, just how the Big Events influence people on a personal level.

 

[abecedarian]

Also, the further you get towards the present date (and Volos' own experiences, I assume), the more interconnected the stories become.

Another main character, btw, is The War. There's always a war around the corner, though they may give it different names. Note that none - or at least very few - of the stories are easily fixed in time; they're always dated "five years after the war" or something to that effect. The consequence of which, at least for me, is that it becomes very easy to really get caught up in every person's story since you don't have a distance of "this happened 70 years ago"; it happens NOW, to someone, somewhere. That, plus the incredible detail of the prose - you can smell the tea and gunsmoke - is what really sold me on "Hurramabad", I think. Snapshots of a country that don't add up to a complete image, just how the Big Events influence people on a personal level.

True, those word images are as clear, if not more precise, than a snapshot could be.