Staff Pick
For as arduous as Mikhail Shishkin's Maidenhair may have been to get into through the first hundred pages, its symphonic rewards are many. The Russian writer's 2005 epic is as unique as it is beautiful, and as elegantly composed as it is breathtakingly inclusive. Difficult it would be to offer any sort of succinct synopsis of the story's plot, let alone a summary of Shishkin's adept and enviable narrative structuring. Even though the novel's four plot threads share some thematic elements (and stylistic differences), Shishkin never forces them along nor deigns to make them interlink with one another.
There is nothing demanding or laborious about Maidenhair, and claims to the contrary betray the tendencies of so many Western readers to require a neat, tidy, cohesive, and linear storyline. There is beauty, there is horror, there is heartbreak, and there is hope, and Shishkin's talent lies in their seemingly effortless synthesis. Merging autobiographical elements (Shishkin formerly served as an interpreter for asylum-seeking refugees in Switzerland), historical accounts, mythological indulgences, and inventive storytelling, Shishkin's novel is intricate and gratifying. Maidenhair is an impressively animate work that inexplicably manages to contain all of the essential constituents of life. Recommended By Jeremy G., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Day after day the Russian asylum-seekers sit across from the interpreter and Peter — the Swiss officers who guard the gates to paradise — and tell of the atrocities they've suffered, or that they've invented, or heard from someone else. These stories of escape, war, and violence intermingle with the interpreter's own reading: a history of an ancient Persian war; letters sent to his son "Nebuchadnezzasaurus," ruler of a distant, imaginary childhood empire; and the diaries of a Russian singer who lived through Russia's wars and revolutions in the early part of the twentieth century, and eventually saw the Soviet Union's dissolution.
Mikhail Shishkin's Maidenhair is an instant classic of Russian literature. It bravely takes on the eternal questions — of truth and fiction, of time and timelessness, of love and war, of Death and the Word — and is a movingly luminescent expression of the pain of life and its uncountable joys.
Review
"Most of the critics agree that 2005 will go down in the history of Russian literature as the year when Maidenhair, the new novel by Mikhail Shishkin, was published."
Literaturnaya Rossia
Review
"Maidenhair is a kind of book they give the Nobel prize for. The novel is majestic."
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Synopsis
Maidenhair is composed of three main storylines: an interpreter listening to the stories of refugees, the letters he sends to his son, and the diaries of a Russian opera singer in the early 1900s. An instant classic of Russian literature, it was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award.
Synopsis
"One of the most prominent names in modern Russian literature."--Publishers Weekly
Day after day the Russian asylum-seekers sit across from the interpreter and Peter--the Swiss officers who guard the gates to paradise--and tell of the atrocities they've suffered, or that they've invented, or heard from someone else. These stories of escape, war, and violence intermingle with the interpreter's own reading: a his-tory of an ancient Persian war; letters sent to his son "Nebuchadnezzasaurus," ruler of a distant, imaginary childhood empire; and the diaries of a Russian singer who lived through Russia's wars and revolutions in the early part of the twentieth century, and eventually saw the Soviet Union's dissolution.
Mikhail Shishkin's Maidenhair is an instant classic of Russian literature. It bravely takes on the eternal questions--of truth and fiction, of time and timeless-ness, of love and war, of Death and the Word--and is a movingly luminescent expression of the pain of life and its uncountable joys.
Mikhail Shishkin is one of Russia's most prominent and respected contemporary writers. When Maidenhair was published in 2005, it was awarded both the National Bestseller Prize and the Big Book Prize.
Marian Schwartz is a prize-winning translator of Russian. The winner of a Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Heldt Translation Prize, Schwartz has translated classic literary works by Nina Berberova, Yuri Olesha, and Mikhail Bulgakov.
About the Author
Mikhail Shishkin has worked as a school teacher and a journalist. In 1995, he moved to Switzerland, where he worked as a Russian and German translator for asylum seekers. His novels have been translated into twenty-five languages. In addition to winning Le prix du meilleur livre étranger (2005), he has won the Russian Booker Prize (2000); following its publication in Russia in 2005, Maidenhair was awarded both the National Bestseller Prize and the Big Book prize, and in 2011 it was awarded the Preis des Hauses der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. His latest novel, Letter-Book, won the Russian Big Book prize in 2011. Shishkin splits his time between Moscow and Zurich.