Weep, Margaret

"Cry, Margarita" is the first part of Elena Syano wa’s artistic-documentary trilogy devoted to the history of the fascist Third Reich—“from dawn to dusk.” The novel focuses on the destinies of the future German leaders. The plot is built on a huge body of archival documents, most of which were previously inaccessible. (In the preface to each novel of the trilogy, the history of access to these documents and work with them is described in detail.) Transcripts of stenographic records, personal correspondence, diaries, notebooks, love messages and poems… “A writer cannot hate his characters, and I hate them. That means I, as the author, simply shouldn’t be in this novel—only they will be here. The way they were hidden from history for decades, and revealed only to one another, to their loved ones, to their lovers.” That was the task the author set for herself. The time period is 1930–1931—the years of the rapid growth in popularity of the National Socialist Party and its young, self-assured, future-oriented leaders. The first steps toward collapse.