A dazzling tale of survival....

I'm no fan of magical realism, but this work of fiction - imaginatively telling the story of the last remaining survivor of a remote Siberian tribe - is as eerily haunting as the landscape it vividly describes. Diego Marani writes masterfully, his prose like pounding surf transporting you on a thrilling ride of furious giant waves.

"Magic, despair, Siberian tigers, jealousy, rivalry, a murder mystery and even a dash of humour are all intermingled in this fantastical but completely believable story of a former Gulag inmate"

 

The Last of the Vostyachs won Diego Morani two of Italy's most prestigious  literary awards. No wonder. While the tale is primarily about survival, themes of isolation, communication, academic rivalry and innocence are woven tightly together to tell the story of an innocent, wordless man who, ultimately, finds a happy ending. 

   "They came out silently, without exchanging a glance; unhurriedly, expecting to be shot at any moment, to crumple on the spot, on to that mud they'd traipsed over so often. But now the camp was empty. The guards had all gone off during the night. The storeroom doors lay open, the chimneys of the barracks had ceased smoking. They fanned out from along the track dug out by the great wheels of the lorries, into the still dark forest, each in their own direction, without a word, as though in all those years psent locked up in there together they had never known each other."



A novel about ordinary people to whom
extraordinary things happen

    Who would imagine that from the "still dark forest" would emerge the tale of spritely linguist Olga, sleazy academic Autorva and his oft-cuckolded wife, Margareeta, and not least of all, the brave and stoic Ivan?

     Whisking the reader alternatively through zones of darkness, tenderness and the near-lascivious, there's something here for almost everyone. Get yourself a copy - and prepare yourself for an absorbing treat. >>>


Upcoming reviews: Mary Costello's The China Factory and Cory Taylor's My Beautiful Enemy.