A new perspective of Dagestan for me

unexpected and priceless find, courtesy of fem_books on livejournal.

alisa ganieva is a young moscow-born daghestan writer; her first short story, salam tebe, dalgat won the debut literary prize in 2009. праздничная гора is her first longform novel, a just-a-step-ahead dystopia extrapolation on daghestan's current existence, and it was a mortifying, exhilarating, painful and wonderful read for me.

she's literally the only writer i know who effortlessly mimics the language i grew up with, russian language through the lens of fifty conflicting local ones, the convoluted street argot that conquers everybody from gopnik boys to government body, the sprinkling of islamic terms; and she's the only writer in my memory who had, with breathless scope, drawn this bright, vibrant, horrifying, complicated world i know. i've read through the book in a state of wincing recognition, and i'm still not quite over it.

the premise is pretty simple; at some nebulous point in close future russia separates itself from the northern caucasian region with the rampart, a berlin wall analogue, leaving the country to fend for itself. there's a flurry of confusion and misinformation and jockeying for power going on while life tries to go as usual, and then, of course, the not-quite homegrown salafi movement takes over, with all the accompanying violence.

the novel is a scattershot of several intertwined character stories, the viewpoint characters (shamil, a young apathetic journalist; asya, an ill-fitting bookish girl; mahmud tagirovich, a washed-out mediocre writer; madina, an ideology-driven girl who married a vahhabit guy for love and religious fervor) mostly try to keep going on as well as they can, while their world slowly falls apart around them, metaphorically and literally, and somewhere over the book the mythological Holiday Mountain, an invisible paradise-like aul keeping the best of all traditions, keeps a silent watch.

i wouldn't have forgiven this book to a russian author, to an outsider; there's a lot of ugly, complicated tension about daghestan-within-russia, and i'm touchy about it to a -nth degree. but ganieva is ~one of us, in the way, and she gets both awful (shamil's character and his unthinking, familiar misogyny, oh god; the way it all circles back to the way women survive in this world, both before and after) and lovely (the people; the colors; the energy; the memory) parts equally well, and shows instead of being judgmental. there's surprisingly little bleakness and despair in this book, for all it's basically an armageddon narrative, and i love it for it.

it's also, apparently, to be translated and published in june, and i'm very curious at how the translator will cope with the idiosyncrasies of ganieva's language; and hoping somebody would be interested in reading it to discuss with me, too, no lie.

He aprendido cosas interesantísimas sobre un lugar del mundo en el que no voy a estar en mi vida pero la verdad es que me he enterado de bien poquito y la autora era un poco alérgica a ponerle un plot a la novela

Disclaimer: I have not finished this book....
I read the introduction, prologue and first chapter (about 40 pages), and just had to stop reading. I personally did not find it engaging or relatable. Maybe I'll try again later... much, much later!

This was a shorter book, that was paced excellently, and built tension very well. I really enjoyed the characters the author wrote, and her sense for what it's like to live in an insular community. I would recommend this book especially to anyone who enjoys Russian literature or who has any interest in the Caucasus republics. I, unfortunately, am not that familiar with the area so I had some trouble keeping up with all of the groups and their points of view and desires during the book. Otherwise I enjoyed it!

Ganieva tells the story of characters living in post-Soviet Dagestan. The settings are interspersed with the contemporary and the historical, lives in-between the world that is and the world that was...and perhaps a little of the world that could be. Like most stories from Eurasia/Russia, there are stories within stories, character asides, and scene shifts that feel complicated and confusing if you don't understand the culture in which they are set. Was "The Mountain" a parable, a place, or a past??? I don't know.

Here is a book that had my brain cells working overtime and as I've said before epitomises the joy of reading translated fiction.
Set in a speculative future where the Republic of Dagestan is faced with the rumour of Russia building a wall across it's border civil unrest gradually begins on the streets and we view both the events on the streets and the history of Dagestan through the eyes of a young man called Shamil and the stories of other characters that he encounters through the book. The opens though with a prologue which appears unconnected as a Muslim family meet as a number of people come in and out of the house but then are surrounded by police forces requiring them to exit as there is a suspected terrorist within suggesting to meet the oppression of a secular government as opposed to the mirroring but also juxtaposing subsequent events .
If , as I had to do, you look on a map, Dagestan stands proudly in the Caucusus's where the influence of Islam stands in direct confrontation with Russia political power , and the book through it's storytelling gives histories which include wars with and against the Ottoman empire and struggles with the Soviets , with neighbours of Chechnya and Georgia this seems as unstable a republic as can be imagined. This is however a nation proud of it's history which shines through the pages.
The book highlights the tension both between the Islamic faith and the secular world but also explores the friction within Islam and the conflicting Shia and Sunni faith. These conflicts come through in Shamil observing arguments between Muslims on the streets that rapidly descend from intellectual argument to physical confrontation , and extend to his own experience as his cousin/girlfriend becomes a devout Muslim and rejects him. And also as he and his friends hunt out girls in dances and work out at the gym as at the same time the veil becomes mandatory, posters are pulled down and female pop singers have to flee .
The book , written in 2012, mirrors the current conflicts in middle east and rogue religious states , in the concluding chapters as the exclusion of the wall allows a hard line Islamic group to take control of the country and I found this examination of the contrasts in religion and culture fascinating . It was hard not to recall the stories of destroyed historic treasures on the news as Shamil walks the streets seeing smashed artefacts looted from museums in the dirt.
There is also a magical element as Shamil and his best friend fall asleep on a mountain and wake uncertain as to whether they have dreamed of a magical village.
At times I have to say I got lost amongst all the characters whose stories emerge tangentially , and also the author uses the style of reading a found novel or telling a folk tale within the narrative but when I put the book down I realised what a joy it had been to read even if I was a little confused however with hopefully a few more brain cells sparked into life.

This was a fascinating look at Dagestan. I loved the depiction of a society at the intersection of contesting ideologies and power structures, hundreds of different cultures and languages, and a tension between tradition and modernity. The settings, details, and conversation painted a portrait of an extremely complex community, but one where people are living normal lives in the middle of extraordinary circumstances. I appreciated the use of so many different phrases and words from different languages because it added so many linguistic 'flavors', reflecting the book's diverse and jumbled world.

a lot less satiric than I expected