Nails

Mikhail Elizarov is a prose writer and musician, the author of novels “Land” (National Bestseller Prize), “The Librarian” (Russian Booker Prize), “Pasternak,” and “Munchkins,” as well as short story collections “We Went Out to Smoke for 17 Years” (the NOC reader-voting prize) and “Cubes.” “Nails” is a collection of short prose by Mikhail Elizarov; in the audiobook, early novellas and stories are presented. The novella “Nails” by Mikhail Elizarov saw the light at the beginning of the 2000s; it was included in the shortlist of the Andrei Bely Prize. Critic Lev Danilkin called this debut the best of 2001. What had previously been considered a deep underground of literature suddenly became legitimized. In figurative terms, Elizarov bit into a magical nail, pulling the country into his ritual. (Roman Bogoslovsky)

“Ten transparent half-moons of the Bakhatovs spit on the newspaper—and, depending on how the nails lay, drew conclusions about the future. Under the influence of the nails, the information printed in the newspaper was transformed into a prediction: Bakhatov received a program of behavior for the next month—for himself and for me. The purity of performing the ritual guaranteed our safety. The divination ended with Bakhatov, with his sharpened fingers, deeply scratching his chest and sprinkling the nails and the paper with blood—then burying everything in the ground, whispering unknown words.”