Captain of the Dog Yacht

Natella Boltianskaya’s first book by a bard and journalist, “The Captain of the Dog Yacht,” is made up of nine stories that come together into a chronicle of our era. Here are real and fictional characters, tragic episodes of the newest history, and strange, almost fairy-tale twists of fate.

Before the reader pass different times and different countries: revolutionary Russia, Nazi Germany, modern America. On the pages of the book are Bucha and the “gay pride,” night pogroms and university protests, life and death, betrayal and rescue.

A dog that falls asleep first during psychotherapy sessions. A girl seeking answers in hypnosis to questions about hatred and war. A Jewish family saved in the 1930s through the efforts of a German engineer. Irony and bitterness, laughter through tears—everything like this lives in Boltianskaya’s prose.

These are stories about a world in which hope turns out to be the sharpest hook, and tragedy is an integral part of everyday life. But in these stories there is also something that no dictators and no wars can destroy: human dignity and the ability to resist.