Monks Under the Moon

This is the story of Moscow’s rulers and of Moscow—how the capital of the empire of communism. The story of endless Russian Chronos, sailing nowhere. The General Secretary, stuffing cash in the Kremlin lavatory. And the arrival of Satan on the long-suffering Russian land.

“The novel ‘Monks Under the Moon’—well, it’s very heavy reading. Of course, that’s how it was conceived (Stolyarov never ‘fails’ a thing: what’s planned is what’s done), but the very fact that the author intentionally wants the reader to find it difficult to push through the book speaks only to the author’s reassessment of the reader’s desire to read precisely his novel. I, for instance, will push through. And Chertkov too. We (flattering ourselves with hope) are professional reader–masochists. But the ordinary reader—sorry, isn’t sure.

The problem of what kind of reader the work is addressed to is too complex to dwell on in detail here and now. Suffice it to say that for Stolyarov this is a very relevant issue, and the ‘Monks’ illustrate it quite clearly. In this novel, form has clearly overwhelmed content. Yes, one thing is very tightly linked to another; Andrey Mikhailovich devised and built it brilliantly. But personally I prefer that the author put into the content a mind an order of magnitude more than into the form. I read it with pleasure and got material for thinking: ‘and do with it what you want.’ After reading the ‘Monks,’ I felt as if the author poured two buckets of worldviews into me, added a bucket of pessimism, and then gave it a liter of engine soot to drink. After something like that, you know how it is—you don’t really feel like peacefully thinking about the pettinesses of the command-and-administrative system and other great achievements of the Soviets. Somehow it’s not up to the Soviets when in your head one of the dying editors is still working… ‘Cinnober, Cinnober, Zaches…’