Ilya Boyashov is a writer with a double bottom. He knows how to tell a story so that the fate of his hero—described as a particular case—turns, in the reader’s mind, into a kind of generalized providential plot. This quality, together with his artistic skill, once allowed Boyashov to rise to the literary Olympus and take the place in modern Russian literature that is rightfully his at the moment.
The new novella by Ilya Boyashov, “Cocoon,” is the story of a man who felt a presence of a soul within himself like an illness—and who spares no effort or expense to cure himself, to get rid of the annoying tenant. Alas, that is reality: infernal forces no longer need to buy human souls—the deal has lost its meaning. Today many are ready to pay themselves, just to rid their physical “self” of an inconvenient neighbor and gain carefree ease—inner calm.