84×108/32, hard cover, 512 pp., 2004
ISBN 5-86793-301-9

One of the most fascinating contemporary storytellers, Yevgeny Shklovsky is author of The Hostage (1996), That Land (2000) and other works published in various periodicals. Shklovsky’s characters do not have names. They are ‘just people’ caught up in the maelstrom of life: this is why they always seem familiar, reminding us of friends, colleagues or relatives. Yet it is not the plot that most captures our imagination when reading Shklovsky – not the twisty storyline, but rather the lack of denouement. We are left with unresolved problems and a lot of food for thought. With Shklovsky, it is always up to the reader to finish the story…
Take, for instance, the situation in The Idol, one of the stories from Fata Morgana. A little boy is taught to worship his distant relative Georgy, a well-known performer. In his attempt to comprehend his parents’ fanatical devotion to ‘brother Goga’, the boy arrives at an unexpected and disconcerting conclusion. The Idol, he is convinced, must be his father. Challenging his parents, he provokes a huge row. Georgy, it emerges, is barely a relative at all – there is, at most, ‘perhaps some really distant link’. All is resolved. And yet… In offering the reader his story, Shklovsky does not offer answers to any of the deep psychological questions which inevitably arise in the reader’s mind.
Lapland, the rather longer story in the collection, keeps us guessing just like the rest. Lapland is the ‘soft, tender, snowy-white’ name bestowed by the heroine upon her datcha – the refuge she seeks in times of trouble. One day, discovering that she is terminally ill, she leaves town and flees ‘to Lapland’. Where does she end up? Does she die – or just move away for a while? The reader is left to ponder.
Yevgeny Shklovsky’s writing will delight the enquiring and thoughtful reader, who likes to be asked questions without being given ready-made answers.
‘Shklovsky’s flawlessly calm, reassuringly flowing style causes these uneasy, disconcerting ambiguities to grate all the more harshly. The soft air, the murmur of the city; lively cafés, cars, an early-evening cigarette; country furniture, the sweet, sharp flavour of port, phones ringing – ordinary phones, mobile phones… All seems as it should be: ordinary, calm and peaceful. And yet, just occasionally, this tranquil world erupts into a veritable phantasmagoria – in the opening The Street, for instance, or the terrifying Nursery. And at these awesome and fantastical moments, we do not think of ‘parables’ or ‘permissible relativity’, but of the hidden demonic side of everyday city life, the darkness of our delusions and the inevitable price we all have to pay in the end…’
(A.Nemser, News Time).

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