In the Name of So-and-So

A psychiatric hospital named after someone is waiting for an order to evacuate from Moscow. It’s October 1941—fascist troops are approaching the city—and everyone knows how they will treat patients and staff. The new novel by Linar Goralik, “Named after Someone,” is based on the real story of the evacuation of the psychiatric hospital named after Alekseev, better known as the Kashchenko Hospital. The hospital was evacuated along the Volga on two barges—in “inhuman conditions,” according to one of the participants. In “Named after Someone,” reality—struck by the illness of war—goes mad around the passengers of the barge. The account of employees of a Soviet institution acting in a fantastic nightmare brings to mind the Strugatskys and Bulgakov, yet reaches the highest poetic intensity. “Named after Someone” is a compassionate, grotesque fairy-tale-like story of rescue in unimaginable circumstances and a feat beyond heroism.