Крайний

by Margarita Khemlin, Маргарита Хемлин

Этот роман - о войне. О времени, когда счастье отменяется. Маленький человек Нисл Зайденбанд и большая бесчеловечная бойня. Выживание и невозможность жизни после того, как в войне поставлена точка. Точка, которая оказалась бездной.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Margarita Khemlin, Ukrainian author, born in U.S.S.R.

Reviews

[Margarita · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this short novel in one day - the language is superb, and along with the atmospheric writing, there is quite a bit of pace to the action. The development of the main character, the young Jewish “outsider”, who is actually born and haphazardly raised, mostly left to his own devices without any strong familial attachments, during a big upheaval in establishing the Soviet rule in western Ukraine prior to World War II, is shown in such a rare continuum, from his feelings of detachment as a young child to the need to move on without having a permanent place to live. The times are ripe for displacement with the early soviet times and the second world war and the Holocaust; despite that, the character moves in a fairly limited area of Western Ukraine which seems to signify a whole world. However, the small world is complex enough with personalities, languages, love and attachments, as well as old obligations and hurts that a whole person can be formed out of a decade or so of hard local travels. The story poetically explains the undefined yearnings of the modern soul, particularly Jewish soul, in conditions almost medieval in nature - stripped of almost all comforts, certainly devoid of almost any cleanliness, outward attention to the non essential and the vain. It shows how the weight of circumstance that pours into a soul may drag a person down to the bottom of a bog, like a stone, which literally happens, but sometimes grounds us just enough to settle down, make a life for oneself and become part of a larger world. The book has many other allegories of homeland, forgiveness, acceptance, belonging, attachment, detachment and mindfulness - definitely to be explored for those who are willing.

So, highly recommended- I am thankful to Lisa Hayden (http://lizoksbooks.blogspot.com/) for introducing me to the writings of Khemlin, whose works she translated and made available in English (so no excuse, if you are not a Russain language reader) - definitely a unique voice with a unique setting and language.

[Lisa Hayden Espenschade · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

Margarita Khemlin's Крайний is, essentially, the confession of a Jewish man who, as a teenager, serves as a partisan during World War 2 then has difficulty fitting into society when the war ends. The novel offers interesting views of post-war life in Ukraine.

(There's more about Крайний on my blog, here.)