A novel about cats and people.
Both play out someone’s life.
Grigory Sluzhitel was born in 1983 in Moscow. He graduated from the directing department of GITIS (Sergey Zhenovach’s workshop), is an actor at the Studio of Theatrical Art, and lead singer of the band O'Casey. “The Days of Saveliy” is his first novel. The manuscript was discovered by Yevgeny Vodolazkin, who also wrote the preface.
“Cats in literature are not a new topic. I will not list everyone who wrote about these sacred animals—from E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Tomcat Murr to Ilya Boyashov’s Muri. And now Saveliy. We understand, of course, that behind cats, human beings always shine through. Sluzhitel’s characters—whether cats or people—are real. Lonely and suffering, laughing and loving. Love in this novel deserves special words. It is—so it happened—platonic. The highest of all loves.” - Yevgeny Vodolazkin