Friendship

DRUZHBA is a novel about the sea, language, love, and poetry that does not disappear forever: it may subside, only to return after decades and even centuries. Two storylines intertwine here. The first is about a Tatar journalist and poet from early 20th-century Kazan: he lives by verses addressed to his beloved, and by the dream of the fabulous, generous Blue Sea, where she is about to go. The second is about a young Moscow lawyer of the 2000s: striving for a career as an advocate, he unexpectedly finds another purpose in Muynak—the former port of the Aral Sea. They are brought together by a woman who is important to one, and the grandmother of the other—and also by poems and the sea.

“Through the heroes’ plots, memory rises from the depths of those they once met, of the courtyards and streets of childhood, of voices long since carried off by the wind. Time passes, a new generation comes—and it is precisely through it that a return becomes possible: not only to origins, but to feelings that seemed to have vanished. DRUZHBA is an attempt to understand how the past continues to live within us, and how memories of the native land become a link between eras and hearts.” — OKTYABR DOSPANOV, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Head of the Department of Archaeology at the State Museum of Arts of Karakalpakstan named after I. V. Savitsky

“When the sea recedes, salt remains. When language leaves, emptiness remains. Sunchelay in early 20th-century Kazan writes poems for her beloved; Bulat searches for traces of his grandmother in a distant city where the Aral once used to roar. Between them lies a century of silence and a shared pain of loss. The heroes are deprived of love, language, and support, but they do not stop searching for themselves. DRUZHBA is a bright story about memory that needs to be given a voice, and about progress—with the price that must be paid for it.” — EKATERINA PETROVA, literary observer for the online newspaper “Realnoe vremya” and host of the Telegram channel “Bulochki s makom”

“Dania Zhansi’s second novel—about Tatar culture and the withering of language—sounds like an important new statement on the regional map of contemporary Russian literature.” — POLINA BOYARKINA, literary scholar, book reviewer, author of the channel “Gospozha Glavred”