The Immortal

Olga Slavnikova is a well-known prose writer, essayist, cultural promoter, author of novels “Jump in Length” (Book of the Year award), “2017” (Russian Booker Prize), “A Dragonfly Enlarged to the Size of a Dog,” “Lightheaded,” and a collection of stories “Love in the Seventh Car.” As is well known, where people are not—there is good. For Olga Slavnikova’s heroes, it’s good where they used to be—in their past. But the world is changing, and reality came crashing in without warning. And everyone adapts in their own way. For Alexey Afanasyevich, the main character of the novel “Immortal,” close ones help him. An eight-time Order cavalier of the Great Patriotic War, for many years he has been confined to bed and doesn’t know that over the last fifteen years grand changes have taken place in the country. They carefully show him the news, where Brezhnev is still alive and construction of communism continues; they read out edited articles from the modern “Pravda”… However, the former intelligence officer begins to suspect that something is off. Also included in the book are the stories “The End of Monplaisir” and “The Mouse.”