A Volga Tale

by Guzel Yakhina, Polly Gannon (Translator)

Overview

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE

The longest river in Europe, the Volga, divides the continent in two. On one side, mighty mountains, large Russian cities with white stone churches, translucent blue lakes of icy water, a cold wind blowing from the North Sea, and, in the early years of the twentieth century, the winds of momentous change blowing even harder, bringing with them revolution and ideologies that will shape the next two centuries of human history. On the other side, a world that belongs to the past, that is shored up by the vast Western Steppe, where small villages dot vast farmlands and life is perfumed by a hot, fragrant breeze that has its source in the Turkmen desert and the salty Caspian Sea.

Two worlds that could not be further apart. Two worlds that will be brought together when Jakob Bach is hired by Udo Grimm to give lessons to Grimm’s daughter, Klara. The love that grows between Jakob and Klara has unimaginable consequences. Expelled from Gnadenthal when their affair is discovered, they settle in a secluded hamlet hidden deep in the woods to live their lives in peace. But following a tragic episode, Jacob, psychically scarred, is forced to raise his daughter Anche alone. The fairy tales he invents and puts to paper in an effort to forge a bond with his daughter become widely known and slowly life in the German colonies along Volga begins to resemble the stories created by Bach.

In the 18th century, the Russian empress Catherine the Great invited Europeans to immigrate and become Russian citizens and farm Russian lands while maintaining their language and culture. The settlers came mainly from Germany, and following the Russian Revolution, the Volga German Soviet Republic was founded, lasting until 1941, when it was abolished after the Germans invaded the region. In September 1941 all Volga Germans were deported. Over half a million were sent into exile in Siberia and Kazakhstan.

Jacob Bach’s life reflects and foreshadows that of his native colony, Gnadenthal, in this sweeping epic set in the dying years of the 19th century through to the mid-twentieth century of personal tragedy and resilience. In telling a stirring family story, Yakhina also recounts the story of a people, a republic, a nation, a tale that begins in quietude, flows and grows mighty, crosses space and time, like the Volga River itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609459345
Publisher:	Europa Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	09/19/2023
Pages:	512
Sales rank:	159,646
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Born in Kazan, Guzel Yakhina is a Russian author and screenwriter. She is the winner of the Big Book literary prize and the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award. She has denounced Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, stating publicly that “This is not my war. I refuse to consider it mine.” She lives in Moscow.

Polly Gannon is a literary translator and quilter. She holds a PhD in Russian literature from Cornell University. For many years, she has taught intersectional cultural studies, translation and poetry. She lives in Berlin

Editorial Reviews

10/16/2023

The tumults of the Russian Revolution are recounted in Yakhina’s laborious epic of a German-speaking Soviet republic (after Zuleikha). In the 1910s, schoolteacher Jakob Bach is a citizen of Gnadenthal, a colony of German immigrants who have settled on the Volga River in Russia. His quiet life is forever altered when he’s summoned by rich, reclusive landowner Udo Grimm to teach Udo’s sheltered 17-year-old daughter, Klara. During private lessons in which Klara is concealed behind a curtain according to Udo’s dictates, student and teacher fall in love. Klara then runs away from her family to be with Jakob, but the couple’s scandalous relationship isn’t accepted by the Gnadenthalers. The two retreat to the forest, where Jakob and Klara learn to live off the land and bear witness to starvation, war, and the Communist takeover. Yakhina uses Jakob as a Forrest Gump figure, a sensitive observer of the phases of the revolution, from bodies of mass casualties floating in the Volga to the earnest attempts of a minor Communist Party functionary to create a new ideology for Soviet citizens. Unfortunately, the action stalls halfway through after Jakob and Klara face a tragic event, and the narrative seems intended mainly to serve as a vehicle for historical information. As fiction, this comes up short. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

A World Literature Today Notable Book 2023
Named Best Foreign Book of 2021 in France
Finalist for the Prix Médicis 2021
Longlisted for the European Literature Prize 2021

“[A] rich epic...Yakhina charts the brutal decades of Stalin's collectivization and repression, and creates a moving portrait of the teacher's profound love for his family, and of Russia's multiethnic population.”—The New Yorker, The Best Books of 2023

“In sumptuous scenes...Ms. Yakhina’s Volga merges with the Magdalena that flows through Gabriel García Márquez’s fiction. Magic trumps realism.”—Boyd Tonkin, Wall Street Journal

“Yakhina’s novel shows how one eccentric dreamer manages, at least temporarily, to avoid the brutal forces of collectivization...darkly brooding.”—The New York Times

“Guzel Yakhina’s masterstroke is her decision to allow us to witness the tumult taking place in Gnadenthal through the eyes of her beloved creation Bach, whose entrenched apathy becomes the focal point around which all else follows.”—Elaine Margolin, World Literature Today

“Steeped in the human history of the Russian Empire, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Soviet regime, Guzel Yakhina’s magnificent novel A Volga Tale matches the power and majesty of that great river.”—On the Seawall

“The larger narrative is itself shaped by folkloric forces ... offset by darkly brooding interludes.”—Alida Becker for The New York Times

“Both Gannon’s translation and Yakhina’s writing are undeniably brilliant. Sentences are rich with description and characterization, and replete with atmosphere. This is a wonderfully quirky novel, at times humorous, at times dark with fear and terror, and interspersed with themes of human resilience.”—Janice Ottersberg, Historical Novels Review

“A Volga Tale is a rich, fantastical, and often disquieting historical novel in which a man who’s obsessed with language inhabits a country that’s been devastated by war and corruption.”—Michele Sharpe, Foreword Reviews

“A delightfully translated novel combining fairy tale and historical fiction in a fully satisfying story of a misfit struggling to sustain life in a perilous time.”—Reading the West

“Drawing from a universal story of national origins, which Yakhina reimagines, embroidering it with golden threads, this book tells a heartbreaking story about places we rarely hear about…an epic river-novel.”—Il Libraio (Italy)

“With poetic and dreamlike language…Yakhina attempts to evoke in the reader the sensation of being a living part of history.”—Toscana Libri

From the Publisher