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Milk And Honey
Vse tam budem
Novel, 336 pp
Publisher: LiveBooks, 2008
Prizes & Awards:
Winner Of The Russian Literary Prize 2008
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Sample English translation is available
Synopsys
Like Saramago’s The Stone Raft, young prize-winning author Vladimir Lorchenkov addresses both global issues of the human condition and topical matters of modern European politics in his horrific, surrealistic novel.
This is the phantasmagorical story of dwellers in the small village of Larga, Moldova, neighbouring on Italy. True to Leo Tolstoy’s idea that “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” every Largavite has his/her own pitiful story, and all of them dream of going to prosperous Italy as a solution to their wretched existence. Italy, the land of milk and honey, becomes their ultimate goal and obsession, and the dwellers of Larga will stop at nothing to reach the living paradise.
At first they sell all their property to pay 4000 Euros a head to swindlers, who, after several days of “traveling,” dump the Largavites on the outskirts of Moldova’s capital city. Having failed to reach their destination by a direct route, the Largavites design an aircraft out of an old tractor - which gets shot up by stray fireworks on a national holiday. They then transform the remains into a submarine, only to have it sink by a frontier post. They master the sport of curling (to take part in an international competition); and, eventually, set off on a crusade, which at last arouses the general concern of the EU.
Loss, shattered hopes, and broken lives become the price the dwellers pay to realize an old truth - we all bear a personal paradise and hell within us.
Bitter, painfully sardonic and insightful, Milk and Honey takes on a deeply tragic note, as it sharply articulates universal assumptions that reveal themselves in a subversive perspective.
Reviews:
«Is it possible for lovely Italy to take the place of both hell and paradise, as well as one’s own most cherished dream? Vladimir Lorchenkov explores this possibility - in vivid colors, with a pamphleteer’s spite, and a good-humored smile» - Literaturnaya gazeta
«This is a bleeding, wild work, grotesque in every twist of its plot and in every character, written brightly, bitterly, humorously, and - paradoxically, as we’re dealing with the grotesque - honestly» - Krupa.ru
«Original, both serious and comic, and, at times, tragic» - Profile magazine
«Vladimir Lorchenkov is a highly talented imposter - painting a colorful, bright, and crazy life in a benighted post-Soviet corner of the world, he successfully presents himself as a “Moldova’s Kusturica”; but he is far gloomier, far more bitter and desperate» - Vedomosti
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