The combination of title and cover art led me to expect that this book would be some kind of whimsical satire, possibly surrealist. I could probably have dispelled that preconception if I’d thought for half a second about Marra’s debut from a couple of years ago, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, which examined the aftermath of the Chechen insurgency and was not what the kids call an upper. Don’t be similarly misled. Tsar is a serious work about serious things.
The subtitle claims the category of “stories”, but realistically, this book occupies that hazy middle ground between short fiction and novel, which is becoming more and more populous and diverse. Beginning with the purges of the 1930s, the book jumps forward to consider, through a series of increasingly tightly (inter)connected narratives, the effect of Soviet dissolution from the perspective of characters whose experiences frequently straddle the watershed events of history.
The characters are bound together by more than just history: a minor work by Zakharov-Chechenets; a prima ballerina; a Soviet-era censor; an artificial forest; a mix tape. The events stretch from Petersburg, to the Siberian arctic, to war-ravaged Chechnya. It’s an ambitious work, and it succeeds effortlessly. It’s also not relentlessly grim (although one in two of the inhabitants of the Siberian mining town will die of lung cancer, so. It is KIND OF grim). Marra, despite his relative inexperience, is adept at sprinkling in enough uplifting moments to lift the book out of the depression it might have otherwise sunk into. The prose is also beautiful, evocative but not intrusive, perfectly balanced to let the complex structure and events do the talking while giving them a rich background against which to unfold.
Obviously Marra has a specialty, and so far he’s managed to express it in two works that are stylistically unique while sharing similar themes. I heartily recommend both this book and Constellation.
Trigger warnings: rape; combat scenes; child abuse.