Solovyov and Larionov: From the award-winning author of Laurus

by Eugene Vodolazkin, Lisa C. Hayden (Translator)

Overview

'THE MOST IMPORTANT LIVING RUSSIAN WRITER' New Yorker

A groundbreaking and gripping literary detective novel set in Soviet-era Russia, from the award-winning author of Laurus and The Aviator

Can we ever really understand the present without first understanding the past?

From the winner of the 2019 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Prize, and the author of the multi-award winning Laurus, comes a sweeping novel that takes readers on a fascinating journey through one of the most momentous periods in Russian history.

What really happened to General Larionov of the Imperial Russian Army, who somehow avoided execution by the Bolsheviks? He lived out his long life in Yalta leaving behind a vast heritage of undiscovered memoirs. In modern day Russia, a young student is determined to find out the truth.

Solovyov and Larionov is a ground-breaking and gripping literary detective novel from one of Russia's greatest contemporary writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786076090
Publisher:	Oneworld Publications
Publication date:	08/04/2020
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Eugene Vodolazkin was born in Kiev and has worked in the department of Old Russian Literature at Pushkin House since 1990. He is an expert in medieval Russian history and folklore. Solovyov and Larionov is his debut novel. Laurus (Oneworld, 2015), his second novel but the first to be translated into English, won the National Big Book Award and the Leo Tolstoy Yasnaya Polyana Award and has been translated into eighteen languages. His third novel, The Aviator (Oneworld, 2018), was shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize and the National Big Book Award. He lives in St Petersburg.

Lisa C. Hayden’s translations from the Russian include Eugene Vodolazkin’s Laurus, which won a Read Russia Award in 2016. Laurus and Lisa’s translation of Vadim Levental’s Masha Regina were both shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize. Her blog, Lizok’s Bookshelf, examines contemporary Russian fiction. She lives in Maine, USA.

Editorial Reviews

‘An ambitious first novel. It is to Vodolazkin’s credit that he pulls it off, creating a substantial, beguiling work that engages the reader on several levels, encompassing a detective story, historical events and even a little romance.’

Scotland The Herald

'Solovyov's and Larionov's careers are interwoven so deftly that the novel can be enjoyed as part academic satire, part historical romp... Solovyov and Larionov contains some hilarious character sketches and set pieces, from academic jousting for precedence to conflicts over property in a communal apartment.'

L.A. Review of Books

‘A very unique blend of literary genres... I became captivated by this Russian tale with all of its stories within a story. This is a true Russian novel.’

Marjorie’s World of Books

‘[A] wry and whimsically humorous historical detective story.’

Times Literary Supplement

‘Vodolazkin has produced a romanticized hero's quest that affirms the "indivisibility and harmony" of history and personal fate. In the face of overwhelming death tolls, he insists on making space for mythology.’

Wall Street Journal

‘Simply cannot be ignored... A smart and often humorous account of contemporary Russian life that reminded me several times of his fellow citizen Svetlana Alexievich’s nonfiction.’

LitHub

‘Third-person narration, circular structure, and archetypal characters lend this beautifully written literary mystery the feel of a modern fable. [We] recommend Vodolazkin’s slowly unfolding story to readers who prefer detailed research, artfully layered descriptions, and character epiphanies to thrills.’

Booklist

‘Third-person narration, circular structure, and archetypal characters lend this beautifully written literary mystery the feel of a modern fable. [We] recommend Vodolazkin’s slowly unfolding story to readers who prefer detailed research, artfully layered descriptions, and character epiphanies to thrills.’

Booklist

‘Vodolazkin has produced a romanticized hero's quest that affirms the "indivisibility and harmony" of history and personal fate. In the face of overwhelming death tolls, he insists on making space for mythology.’

Wall Street Journal

‘I couldn't put it down.’

A Bookish Type blog

‘More than a beautifully written coming-of-age story...one of the finest novels I have read in years.’

World Literature Today

‘I found Solovyov and Larionov to be just as good a book as The Aviator in its beautiful writing, its thought-provoking narrative and its wonderfully atmospheric sense of place and time. I can see that I'm going to be pondering on it for quite some time to come...’

Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings

‘Award-winning author Vodolazkin seamlessly weaves together the lives of his two heroes... [but] this coming-of-age story offers the reader a much richer experience than mere biography.’

Historical Novel Society

‘Vodolazkin is one of the most interesting contemporary writers.’

'5 great Russian books for your summer reading li Russia Beyond

‘A very unique blend of literary genres... I became captivated by this Russian tale with all of its stories within a story. This is a true Russian novel.’

Marjories World of Books

‘A very unique blend of literary genres... I became captivated by this Russian tale with all of its stories within a story. This is a true Russian novel.’

Marjorie’s World of Books

‘A substantial, beguiling work that engages the reader on several levels... A thoroughly enjoyable read.’

Complete Review

‘An ambitious first novel. It is to Vodolazkin’s credit that he pulls it off, creating a substantial, beguiling work that engages the reader on several levels, encompassing a detective story, historical events and even a little romance.’

Herald

PRAISE FOR THE AVIATOR by Eugene Vodolazkin:


"Evocative and enigmatic...despite this book’s gentle love story or its murder mystery or its sf flourishes, it is, in many ways, a quintessentially Russian novel, as vivid and probing as they come."


—Booklist, Starred Review


"The arc of the narrative is as simple and clever as a philosopher’s parable. But this is also a deeply emotional book, and often it is these probing questions that give human depth to the characters.... THE AVIATOR is a quietly radical novel, animated by the spirit of Dmitry Likhachev, an academic who knew what it was to suffer the blows of history first-hand."


—Words Without Borders


"A fascinating, science fiction-tinged chronicle of a century in Russia."


—BBC Culture


"A brilliant, though-provoking read."


—Historical Novel Society, Editor's Pick


"[The AVIATOR] offers the pleasures of a time travel narrative without the usual hokeyness.... Great reading for all audiences.”


—Library Journal


"An unabashed, panoramic view of the landscape of human consciousness affected by time, place, faith, and faces.... In the vein of Dostoyevsky, religion here is not an enemy to be vanquished, but rather a consolation and a means of deciphering the mechanisms of the human mind and the world—seen and unseen. The Aviator speaks to common experience while soaring into realms that enfold the human drama below.”


—Foreword Reviews, Starred Review

From the Publisher

2019-02-18

This debut novel from Russian writer Vodolazkin (but his third to be translated into English; The Aviator, 2018, etc.) is an odd, often likable mélange: part academic satire, part military history, part philosophical meditation, part detective tale, part rollicking caper.

Solovyov is a young academic who grew up at Kilometer 715, a railroad stop so obscure that it wasn't even a backwater—call it a back-no-water. When he makes his way to St. Petersburg to begin an academic career, he's assigned as his thesis topic a legendary general named Larionov—a fierce defender of the old regime who somehow, after the Revolution, not only kept his life and liberty but thrived in the new Soviet Union, living out his days on the beach at Yalta with the benefit of a pension. To solve this mystery, the dogged Solovyov strikes out for Crimea, where he falls in the path and under the sway of the lovely Zoya, an employee at the Chekhov Museum whose mother was the general's attendant late in life. Zoya sweeps him into various intrigues and adventures as he tries to unearth the general's elusive diary. Eventually Solovyov achieves escape velocity from Zoya and leaves Yalta, first for an academic conference on the general and then, acting on information he receives there, back home at the nearly abandoned Kilometer 715. The pace lags occasionally, and the hundred kinds of complication can seem excessive or indulgent, but there is sprightly, funny satire here and, beneath it, a surprising vein of poignancy.

A busy but intriguing hybrid of a novel.

Kirkus Reviews