The Mountain and the Wall

by Alisa Ganieva, Carol Apollonio (Translation)

This remarkable debut novel by a unique young Russian voice portrays the influence of political intolerance and religious violence in the lives of people forced to choose between evils.

The Mountain and the Wall focuses on Shamil, a young local reporter in Makhachkala, and his reactions, or lack thereof, to rumors that the Russian government is building a wall to cut off the Muslim provinces of the Caucasus from the rest of Russia. As unrest spreads and the tension builds, Shamil's life is turned upside down, and he can no longer afford to ignore the violence surrounding him.

With a fine sense for mounting catastrophe, Alisa Ganieva tells the story of the decline of a society torn apart by its inherent extremes.

Genres: Fiction, Russia, Contemporary, Novels, Russian Literature, Literary Fiction, Literature

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Alisa Ganieva (or Ganiyeva; Russian: Алиса Аркадьевна Ганиева) is a Russian author, writing short prose and essays. In 2009, she was awarded the Debut literary prize for her debut novel Salaam, Dalgat!, published using the pseudonym of Gulla Khirachev.

Ganieva was born in Moscow in an Avar family but moved with her family to Dagestan, where she lived in Gunib and later attended school in Makhachkala. In 2002 she moved back to Moscow and graduated from the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute. She works as a literary critic for the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily.

She won the Debut literary prize, the under-25 competition for authors writing in Russian, in 2009 for Salaam, Dalgat!. The identity of the author, who published it pseudonymously, was only discovered at the award ceremony. The novel describes the everyday life of Dagestani youth in the cities and shows the decay of traditional life and their difficult relations with Islam, the traditional religion of Dagestanis. The characters use the "Dagestani Russian", a pidgin version of Russian, to communicate, the first instance when this was presented in a literary work.

In 2012, Ganieva published her second novel, Holiday Mountain, also set in Dagestan. In 2014, it was translated to German. In 2015 the Italian and the american translations came out. The last one published by the Deep Vellum Publishing House (USA) is called "The Mountain And The Wall". Ganieva spoke about the book to the audience of the London bureau of the Voice Of Russia radio.

In April 2015 her new novel "The Bride And The Bridegroom" was released in Russia and is already listed for the major literary awards.

She also published short stories and fairy tales. She has received a number of literary awards for her fiction.

In June 2015 Ganieva was listed by The Guardian as one of the most talented and influential young people living in Moscow.[

Reviews

[Antonomasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The recently-translated Islamic-fundamentalist-takeover-dystopia novel that isn't Houellebecq. And whose characters are rather less jaundiced.
In a near-future Dagestan, there are rumours that Putin's Russia has had enough of dealing with trouble from the Caucasus country and has just put a wall up across the border - like the Berlin Wall, as a couple of characters say - and it proves to be true. Extremist Salafi / Wahhabi insurgents, already present in fairly significant numbers, see a power vacuum, and quickly try to seize authority. The novel follows an extended network of friends and family trying to make sense of the chaos, concentrating on Shamil, a twentysomething rookie journalist. The viewpoint characters, with a few exceptions, are middle class moderate Sufis or secular Muslims who have more sympathy for local folk traditions or for Westernised pop culture than for the fundamentalists. We get a sense of how life was before (I'm not sure if it's a portrait of things as they are now, or marginally worse in some ways) and later of capital city conditions deteriorating as a self-appointed morality police of angry young men with guns pays more attention to enforcing the destruction of museums and the veiling of women than to getting electricity, water and rubbish collection running again - whilst residents with transport leave to hole up with relatives in remote mountain villages, or try to get to the Georgian border.
The introduction mentions that most Russian writing about the Caucasus known in English is essentially colonial, by the likes of Lermontov and Tolstoy. A few more books by authors native to the region have been translated recently – e.g. the Dalkey Archive Georgian Literature series – but this is apparently the first ever from Dagestan – albeit written mostly in Russian - to appear in English.

Some background knowledge about contemporary Russia will help when reading The Mountain and the Wall, but you don't need to be a specialist to get something out of it. What I'd read a few months ago in Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible helped orientate me around the book: Russian racism towards Central Asians [this interview with the author mentions how she used to get stopped by the police, and how Russian media coverage of the region has changed recently], the growth of fundamentalism in the region, and typical attitudes between men and women, in Russia and in the Caucasus republics. The Mountain and the Wall is steeped in the culture and vocab of its home country almost as much as The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is in the Dominican Republic. Ganieva's main Russian narrative is translated to English, but the Dagestani and Islamic words - foreign to the average European Russian - remain in their own language. Unlike the Junot Diaz, this book has its own glossary, but it's at the end, and there'll be a lot to look up unless you've got family from the region or you've studied it. People who know Arabic Islamic terms will be familiar with a percentage of the vocab (language origins - as there are several - are given for the glossed words), albeit some of the Arabic words are apparently used with slightly different meanings in Dagestan. Footnotes would have been more user-friendly than endnotes, as in some chapters, especially near the start, there are multiple terms to look up per page: it's the sort of situation made easier by keeping an ebook open on two screens (not great if you fail to resist distractions lurking elsewhere on the computer), or photocopying the glossary from a paper book. So although the narrative itself is very readable, the need for notes means this isn't exactly the ideal commuting book. Best read at home over a day or two, so you'll hopefully remember a few of the more commonly-used local terms and not need to look them up every single time they appear. There are too many new words for all but the most superpowered language learners to absorb in the time it takes to read a 250 page novel. (The glossary lists 125 terms, only 12 of which were already familiar to me.) Then, that pet hate of glossary users - when a word isn't in it, and you couldn't have known until you'd looked! That wasn't too bad here, better than in most glossed novels: maybe 85-90% of the words I expected to be glossed, were.
Another form of information overload for readers less familiar with the region is the number of language and ethnic groups mentioned in political conversations, at least twice as many as named in the main Wikipedia article on Dagestan. If you're not overly bothered, most of these could be treated simply as "group of people who think X, or live in Y", as the mentions are fleeting. Unlike an Estonian novel I'm currently in the middle of (Radio), in which the narrator often talks like a tour-guide and historian, The Mountain and the Wall isn't quite a standalone introduction to the region; there's a general foreword, but if you're the sort of reader who prefers to have some systematic information on what it means to be an Avar or a Kulyk or a Lezghin, you'll need to read beyond the covers.

That's a lot about the information content - which wouldn't cause the bat of an eyelid to friends who read the likes of Pynchon or A. Theroux on a regular basis - but directly after finishing the book, I felt like I'd done more work than for other novels of this size: more importantly, unexpected work. (I've written about this in detail so the effort isn't unexpected for anyone who's looked at this post, and to show it's not just a philistine reaction - “ but of course I won't have to do that” - as a shorter account could imply to a stranger.) Oscar Wao is the best comparison I know of, because similarly, The Mountain in the Wall isn't highly complex in its English vocab, experimental or tricksy. It may still satisfy seekers of the meta, as it contains multiple viewpoints, and some fascinating books-within-books. I loved the long 'excerpts' from a didactic Soviet novel for Dagestani teenage girls, and the works of a mediocre modern epic poet writing about traditional mountain life, even more than the main story - I'd have happily read the whole lot of both if they were there.

The Mountain and the Wall indicates a three-, or even four-way divide in the larger culture of Dagestan: folk culture (allied to moderate Islam); new fundamentalist Islam; Western commercial culture and fashion - with some sympathy for the folk culture/moderate side; and a probably forgotten Soviet atheistic culture opposed to all of the previous three. Ganieva hints that women may have had the greatest respect under the Soviets, at least in theory, although there were otherwise many drawbacks in the way the USSR attempted to cut people off from their history. Most significant characters have respect for the folk culture, especially material culture - and, being self-sustaining unlike urban Westernised tackiness [which word I dare to use because the author herself has described the capital, Makhachkala, as “backward and provincial”], it ends up as a refuge from the fundamentalists. The implication seems to be that this culture would be a very good thing if only women were equal within it, and there was less violence and feuding.
The depressing interactions between boys & girls out clubbing I more or less recognise from pre-university days. (As a witness only, because I was a teenage snob devoid of any sense of obligation to talk to anyone I found 'unattractive' or 'thick'.) There was a divide between the behaviour of most university boys - who rarely had any presumptions - and those before, albeit in a different town. Among these Dagestanis twenty-odd years later, the graduates behave just the same as yr boy racer type did, and probably still does, here with girls his own age. These scenes show that two-way problem where girls are trained to be coy and indirect, and boys to be persistent, and only a whole lot of different values and behaviour on both sides will change things. And this was an environment where I had no doubt the description 'street harrassment' was merited; this was not the occasional random compliment that floats away on the breeze, which in most parts of Britain I know is a very small part of the urban ecosystem, one that I take exception to certain popular quarters of the internet taking exception to. These Makhachkala girls barely have time to think whilst walking along, what with the barrage of aggressive catcalls and accostings. (And unlike some Northern & other working class girls in the UK, the young Dagestani women definitely aren't acculturated to give as good as they get or to whistle and whoop at boys as much as the other way round – that would, sadly, be shameful in their society.) And thus this sort of stuff goes, even more clearly than it had before, into the category of things I wouldn't want abolished completely but which there can, emphatically, be too much of (as well as the wrong sort of).

Whilst most of The Mountain and the Wall is set in the capital, there are also plenty of descriptions of traditional crafts (during Shamil's visit to the mountains to research an article) and customs (especially in the 'epic poem'). Hm, I might read some novels at least as much for ethnography as for stories... This is a fascinating book, and aside from the quibbles over the format of the notes, one I was delighted to have read. I feel as if I haven't actually finished it, because I still find myself looking up related articles.

[Hendrik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alissa Ganijewa gehört zu einer neuen jungen Generation russischer Schriftsteller. Eine erste Probe ihres Könnens lieferte sie mit der Kurzgeschichte "Salam, Dalgat!", die Suhrkamp in einer Anthologie mit dem vielversprechenden Titel "Das Schönste Proletariat der Welt" veröffentlicht hat. Darin thematisierte sie bereits die widersprüchlichen und komplizierten Verhältnisse in ihrer Heimat Dagestan. Dagestan ist eine russische Teilrepublik im Kaukasus. Von einer Vielzahl von Ethnien bevölkert und wie die Nachbarrepublik Tschetschenien, der Bedrohung radikaler Islamisten ausgesetzt. Eine unübersichtliche, spannungsreiche Gemengelage, zu der die russischen Sicherheitskräfte mit ihrem kompromisslosen Vorgehen ihren Teil beitragen.

In ihrem Debütroman Die russische Mauer, greift Ganijewa diese Problemlage erneut auf. In einer nahen Zukunft beschließt Russland sich endgültig von seinen Kaukasusrepubliken zu trennen. Man errichtet einen Grenzwall und überlässt die Bevölkerung einfach ihrem Schicksal. In das entstandene Machtvakuum stoßen salafistische Kräfte, die im Handumdrehen einen islamischen Gottesstaat errichten. Eigentlich wäre diese Grundkonstellation eine gute Ausgangsbasis, um daraus eine interessante Geschichte zu entwickeln. Gerade unter dem Eindruck, einer zur Zeit weltweit zu beobachtenden Ausbreitung wahhabitischer Strömungen des Islams. Leider verliert die Erzählung zu oft ihren Fokus. Eine Vielzahl von Stimmen und häufig abrupte Perspektivwechsel, erschweren es den Überblick über das Geschehen zu behalten. Irgendwann blickt man einfach nicht mehr durch in dem Wirrwarr von Ethnien und Verwandtschaftsverhältnissen. Vielleicht liegt genau darin eine Absicht begründet, nämlich die Feststellung zu treffen, dass die dagestanische Gesellschaft ein Konglomerat aus vielfältigen kulturellen Einflüssen ist. Ein enges Geflecht aus historisch gewachsenen Beziehungen, das sich mittels simpler Nationalitätenpolitik nicht einfach wieder trennen lässt.

Der Text widmet sich dementsprechend ausgiebig dem kulturellen Reichtum und dem Brauchtum der Kaukasusregion. Dagegen verwundert die seltsam blasse und oberflächliche Darstellung der Charaktere. Was das beschriebene Szenario einer radikal-islamischen Terrorherrschaft betrifft, so hat inzwischen die Realität den Roman an Grausamkeit noch bei weitem überholt. Man denke nur an die Zerstörungs- und Mordwut des IS in Syrien und Irak. Sicherlich ist hier nicht der ganz große literarische Wurf gelungen, aber immerhin wirft das Buch einmal einen Blick auf die Regionen abseits der omnipräsenten Metropolen Russlands.

[Ronald Morton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let me make a quick note for anyone who is considering reading this book: there is a Glossary at the back. I only found it as I finished the book, and had spent the majority of the novel just context-clue-ing unfamiliar terms, and it would have been helpful to know up front. So, there you go: you're welcome.

I'll admit, geography - especially Eastern European geography - is not a strong point for me. So, I think I might have been aware that a county named Degestan existed prior to starting this novel, but I doubt I would swear to it. But, this a novel about Degestan, written by a woman actually from there, which I gather from the prologue is a rare thing. It is about a Russia's (fictional) decision to build a wall between themselves and the Caucasus republics to shield themselves from the mounting tension and escalating violence. The rumors of the wall only serve to increase both the tension and the violence, of course.

The primary source of tension in the book is the rising fundamentalist Islamic insurgency (which is apparently a very real, fairly long term issue in Dagestan) and its uprising and separatist grab for power. The author does a superb job of slowly building the tension in the city through the first sections of the book, to the point that the escalation and outbreak of violence feels both expected and natural.

The title works on a couple different levels - both of which are in some way present in the text itself. First, there is the purely physical: there is the hard border of the Mountain range behind Dagestan, and the implied forthcoming border of the proposed Wall; a literal "rock and a hard place". But the Mountain of the title also references a mythical, ephemeral city, which promises both hope and relief from the tensions and hardship of the present; while the Wall is a stand-in for the problems of the present, and the creeping threatening dread that is cresting over the city.

A slow burn of a read, which feels even more increasingly relevant today at a global scale than it would have when it was written four years ago. The jacket copy quotes the author: "It is no longer possible to describe my book as fantastic or dystopian. It is a work or realist literature, dealing with something that might very well have happened" - it is a quote that is frighteningly (sadly) true, and yet also serves to highlight the vitalness of the work.

[egelantier · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Lillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knowing nothing really about Dagestan other than it's where the Boston Marathon bombers' family came from, reading this novel felt more like being dipped into an experience than following a plot. The premise is that Russia decides to separate itself from the strife and turmoil of the North Caucasian region by building a wall. A handful of intertwined characters react to this development and reveal the intricate strands making up this knotty society (roughly 34 different ethnic groups): Shamil - a journalist; Asya - an awkward, young, bookish girl; Mahmud Tagirovich - a writer past his prime; and Madina - Shamil's fiance who leaves him and marries one of the Islamic fundamentalists trying to wrest Dagestan out of the clutches of the West and tuck it into a caliphate. I'm reminded of something a reviewer said about Orhan Pamuk's novel Snow (a novel I kept thinking about as I read this one) ... "The book makes Turkey legible, as well as digestible, to the West." The Mountain and the Wall at the very least makes Dagestan visible to the West, but even more it makes the complexity, the complicated cultural heritage and the parallel reality that seems necessary in order to sustain hope there -- the Mountain if you will -- of much more interest than all that the Wall and its reasons for being represent.

[Martin Iguaran · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5.
Hasta que leí este libro, solo había escuchado sobre Daguestán una vez, en un artículo de la BBC titulado "El lugar más peligroso de Europa" (no era exactamente un artículo elogioso). Después de leer el libro de Ganieva, me quedó en claro que no voy a visitarlo en un futuro próximo. Daguestán es un rincón de Rusia plagado de conflictos y rencores étnicos y religiosos, corrupción, desempleo y muchos problemas más. En mi caso, mi problema con el libro no pasa por la prosa ni por la cantidad de términos extranjeros-a fin de cuentas, uno a menudo lee libros para informarse de países lejanos-sino con la trama: solamente repunta a partir de la segunda mitad del libro, cuando los terroristas islámicos toman el poder y crean un califato que poco y nada tiene que envidiarle al régimen del terror de ISIS. Pero digamos que una trama que levanta recién a las 17o páginas no es lo ideal.

[Max Berendsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to follow

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

A refreshing new voice in Russian literature by 2011 Iowa International Writing Program alumna Alisa Ganieva's The Mountain and the Wall, translated from the Russian by my graduate school mentor, Carol Apollonio, with a great introduction by Ronald Meyer of Columbia University's Harriman Institute.

This is a pretty damn amazing book—the first novel ever in English from the Russian republic of Dagestan, and a debut novel that offers a completely new voice in Russian literature: a woman, Muslim, from Dagestan...it's a truly great read.

And I love it so much I've just signed Ganieva's second novel, Bride & Groom, which I'll publish in early 2017.

[Serbay GÜL · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yine insanı insandan ayıran bir duvar ama neyse ki bu sefer kurgu.

Rusya , bir duvar örmeyi planlayarak müslümanların yaşadığı Dağıstan'daki bölgeyi Rusya'dan ayırıyor ve resmen halkı kaderiyle baş başa bırakıyor. Bunu fırsat bilen cihatçılar hızlı bir şekilde yönetime ele geçirip. Bir din; kinin, öfkenin ellerine geçtiğinde korkunç bir yönetim şekline ve zulme dönüşüveriyor. Özgürlükler, çeşitlilik ve renklilik hızla kayboluyor. Yakın tarihte örneklerinin çok görüldüğü şeriat yönetimine geçişi anlatıyor.Sinemanın , müziğin yasaklandığı kütüphanelerin yerle bir edildiği bir Dağıstan.

Ben bir tavsiye üzerine hediye edilmesi sonucu okudum kitabı ve çok severek okudum. Üzerinde uzun uzun konuşulabilecek olan Şamil ve Medine isimleri bu tarz korkunç geçiş süreçleri için çok önemli birer figür olarak tanıştırılıyor bizlerle. Kitap olası bir gerçeği ve korkunun ürünü olarak sunulmuş bizlere. Bir şekilde yazar Alisa'nın iç dünyasında yıllardır yaşadığı endişeyi hissedebiliyorsunuz okurken. Sabri Gürses'in de muhteşem çeviri yeteneğini göz ardı etmemek gerek.

[Laila Collman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've never read anything from a Dagestanian author before, and it was enriching to get a glimpse into life in this unique region through a fictional tale. I especially loved this moment from the novel:

"My father used to call me over and ask: 'Tell me, Makhmud, what is small and big at the same time?'
'I don't know, Father,' I would answer.
'Dagestan,' my father explained. 'Just think how small it is, and yet how many peoples and customs, languages and arts, animals and plants coexist here... We Dagestanians, all of us, are very different, but we are alike in our honesty, hospitality, our need for justice. Remember that you are Dagestani, my son, and don't exchange that honor for any worldly gold!'"

[Rebecka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Firstly, this took me ages to read because of the setting. I have never touched anything Dagestani before, so all cultural references and all the vocabulary from their five million ethnic groups + Islam related terminology were lost on me. Every time a new term was used (often 3 in one Kindle page!) there was an explanation within brackets. Needless to say, I didn't exactly write these down and I don't have a perfect memory, so the next time they appeared? No idea what they meant. Tons of words weren't in my Ru-Ru Kindle dictionary either, nor on Yandex, and I hate having to Google as a THIRD OPTION when reading a book. So, language wise, it was demanding.

That would have been perfectly fine if I'd been invested in the characters. But no. The author doesn't create any sort of bond with any character in the book. This story is too preoccupied with showing an alternative reality for Dagestan, where a wall is erected to separate the republic from Russia at the same time as extremist muslims take over, to focus on building a relation with the reader. There is a main character, Shamil, but he is unsympathetic and selfish and downright uninteresting, and a couple of side characters that I had some difficulty following in the beginning. One interesting aspect of the book is how Shamil reads books in the book. Or, he doesn't really read them; his version of reading consists in reading a couple of paragraphs every 20 or so pages, and we get to read those passages with him. I'm sure those passages serve as some symbolic representation of something Dagestani, but I just know too little of the area to make any deductions.

Overall, very disappointing (but I did discover a new dish thanks to it - Xinkal!). I'll still read her collection of short stories though.

[Sookie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating dystopian story about contemporary socio political issues set in Daghestan.

The mountain and the wall posits an interesting and an intriguing cultural conflict. Multiple cultures are trying to find a stronger foothold than the other while western/modernization is an inevitable influence that the traditional, fundamentalists, and folk cultures have to deal with. In these mountain areas that seem to exist in outskirts of larger civilizations, people defending their faith and ideologies.

Its evident that fundamentalism has arrived in their region and the cast of characters in this story represents varieties of cultures representing different points of conflict. In a dystopian setting where the geography is closed off by a wall, tension rises among people.

It does require some amount of work by the reader to understand cultures and some history to understand the current setting of the novel. Alisa Ganieva takes the reader on a journey into her homeland, its memories, customs, culture and its people. A great read.

[Reinier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ik zou dit boek willen omschrijven als een kakofonische roman. Er gebeurt zoveel, er zijn zoveel stemmen te horen, zoveel woorden uit verschillende talen, zoveel culturen. Dat is ook precies wat deze roman wil laten zien, en wat er kan gebeuren als we die veelheid kwijtraken.

Het overzicht raakte ik soms kwijt, maar het nawoord van de vertalers gaf een korte samenvatting waardoor het weer helder werd, gelukkig.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Mountain and the Wall tells the interwoven stories of a community being undone. It is set in Dagestan, but could have taken place anywhere from the former Yugoslavia to Indonesia. In part it is the story of Wahhabism arising in the vacuum left by a retreating authoritarianism and weak or corrupt quasi-democratic civil authorities. How many times did scenes in this book play out in small villages across the Middle East in the last 3 years?

It would be selling the book short if that was all that I focused on, and truthfully the pernicious "-ism" could have taken any flavor and the characters would have still been compelling. If you like Camus' "The Stranger" and its anti-hero I think the main protagonist will appeal to you, though he is not Meursault transposed to Dagestan.

I found him to be quite un-chivalrous and with a very satisfying (if subtle) moral arc to his story.

[Yelena Furman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is Ganieva's second major work and first novel, which is not without its flaws. Also, don't look for a female protagonist's point of view: it has a male central character and fairly cliched, secondary female ones. At the same time, she is writing about Dagestan, a heavily Muslim part of the Russian Federation, in a Russian language specific to that region. Both of these aspects are rare enough in and of themselves to warrant reading this novel.

[Marijn Schafer · Rating 5 out of 5]

De Russische muur is een boek dat je onderdompelt in de veelzijdige cultuur van Dagestan. Via talloze personages krijgt je een uitgebreid beeld van de ingewikkelde Kaukasus. Ganijeva beschrijft Dagestan aan de ene kant heel liefdevol, met respect voor de natuur, de cultuur en de tradities, maar aan de andere kant laat ze ook zien hoe moeilijk het leven op de Kaukasus is, waar de conflicten vandaan komen en hoe hopeloos het eigenlijk is (dat gevoel blijft na het lezen achter).

In het boek worden veel woorden uit de streektalen gebruikt, gelukkig is er een woordenboekje achterin. Ook is er een uitgebreid nawoord van de vertalers (topvertaling!), waarin de geschiedenis van Dagestan, de cultuur en de symboliek worden verklaard. Dit nawoord heb ik halverwege gelezen, dat hielp. Met Google Maps de steden en dorpjes opgezocht en er in streetview rondgelopen.

[Kriegslok · Rating 5 out of 5]

First published in 2012 Alisa Ganieva's novel is a powerful work. Taking her native Dagestan as her subject she imagines a situation in which Islamism grips the contemporary state as it is in turn physically cut off from Russia. Given the tragedy of Islamist uprisings which have torn through the region her premise is not that hard to imagine. She convincingly describes the slow encroachment of the Islamists - who bare an uncanny resemblance to ISIS which was beginning to wreak terror through Syria as she wrote - and the surprise and incomprehension of much of the population as their certainties and accepted way of life begins to disintegrate around them. Woven into this are the day to day lives and histories of families and individuals, their weddings, loves and losses which all come to be affected by the rapidly changing world they are becoming trapped in. There a forays into literature, culture and hints of magical realism. This is a towering literary work and the authors debut. A gripping and rewarding read with an all to real subject matter.

[El Buscalibros | elbuscalibros.com · Rating 4 out of 5]

En las calles se rumorea que el gobierno ruso está levantando una muralla para aislar Daguestán, «tierra de montañas», del resto del país. La prensa y los políticos enmudecen, pasando de la incredulidad al asombro y de este al miedo, y las habladurías y la incertidumbre encienden los ánimos nacionalistas gestados en la región tiempo atrás. Proliferan las asambleas populares de distintas etnias en plazas y esquinas, y el fundamentalismo religioso abandona la clandestinidad y decide tomarse la justicia por su mano: las tiendas se cierran, los policías se esconden, las mujeres se cubren y la confusión se adueña de la ciudad. LA RESEÑA SIGUE AQUÍ: http://www.elbuscalibros.com/2016/02/...

[Katarzyna Bartoszynska · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I was so leery of the whole notion of "Islamic dystopia" that I didn't relax and start enjoying the book until 2/3 of the way through. This is a strange and surprising read: catastrophe coupled with indifference and ennui; a startlingly vivid sense of local character (and all its ambivalences); a scattered, distracted sort of narrative that refuses any kind of bird's eye view and ends suddenly, unresolved. I liked it.

[Luis Cortes Mendez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Una historia sencilla si se quiere comprender la evolución en las regiones del Cáucaso de lo que suposo la integración en la Unión Soviética y el Islam más ortodoxo.

Para mi un libro sencillo que puede acortarse mucho, pero que nos hace reflexionar lo que buscamos en los demás. Es la primera novela que he leído de esta joven escritora y que me apunto para volver a leer algo más de ella.

[Q · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book must have been a nightmare to translate and it's probably very difficult to understand without some understanding of culture. The story is something out of nightmare as well, for all fantastical mundanity of it.

[Sami]

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!

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: This remarkable debut novel by a unique young Russian voice portrays the influence of political intolerance and religious violence in the lives of people forced to choose between evils.

The Mountain and the Wall focuses on Shamil, a young local reporter in Makhachkala, and his reactions, or lack thereof, to rumors that the Russian government is building a wall to cut off the Muslim provinces of the Caucasus from the rest of Russia. As unrest spreads and the tension builds, Shamil's life is turned upside down, and he can no longer afford to ignore the violence surrounding him.

With a fine sense for mounting catastrophe, Alisa Ganieva tells the story of the decline of a society torn apart by its inherent extremes.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Wow. The 2025 US needs a writer of this caliber, of this perspicacity, and possessed of this level of moral courage in flensing the rotting whale carcass of our Body Politic. Despite being ten years old (!), this near-future story of a country's takeover by religious extremists with an extremely high-control agenda is fresh as yesterday's op-ed page.

The unnervingly spot-on takedowns of "do as I say not as I do" hypocrisy, of hyperconsumerist end-stage capitalism, and of youthful hedonism's blinding obfuscation of the petty tyrannies and ideological inconsisencies of the new regime *rock*. Author Ganieva saw what was happening in Dagestan, a north Caucasian conflict zone nominally still part of Russia, and puts it all on just over 250 pages of unsparing prose.

Complacent US people ought to read it as soon as possible. The consequences of remaining blind to the end result of the unfolding coup are dire. It's all made perfectly plain here. It's also wryly amusing, at time darkly funny, and a very quick read. Shamil, our intrepid reporter main character, would win a Pulitzer in the US journalism space despite being pretty hapless...though largely not culpable for it, given the system he works within.

The atrocious anti-intellectual and anti-historical religious nuts are the better armed barbarian compadres of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting-killing, science-denying, book-banning idiots in the US. Their biggest head start on our vandals is their well-honed dagger of misogyny, held at the throats of every woman not veiled and submissive.

I do not want to live in their world. Their solution to that is to kill men like me for refusing to pretend they are the god-anointed masters of Earth. Resisting them is the way I stay able to look at myself in the mirror.

I hope you will take the same heart from this brief, inexpensive read.

[Tanveer Karim · Rating 3 out of 5]

When people outside Russia think about Russian literature, they usually think about classical Russian writers such as Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, and the stories of these writers broadly portrays the relationship between Russians -the ethnic group (русские) - with Russia. But there are very few English translations of works written by the other kind of Russians - the non-ethnic Russians, but citizens of Russia (россияне). As a result, those who do not read or understand the Russian language are left with a very skewed view of the people who make up the country of Russia.

This translation is a break from that perspective. Alisa Ganieva is an ethnic Avar who grew up in Dagestan as a child and then moved to Moscow. The Mountain and the Wall is the first-ever Dagestani novel to be translated into English. For those like myself, who are fascinated by the Caucasians and the cultures of the Caucasus, this novel is an exciting opportunity to see things from the point of view of a Dagestani.

The novel is about a fictional wall that is being built between "Russia" and the Caucasus; Moscow is doing this to protect itself and "Russia" from radical Islamism that is taking over the Caucasus region, Dagestan in particular. Although the reader never gets the chance to visit or see the Wall, he or she gets to see how the physical barrier affects and influences the lives of everyday Dagestanis. It is an interesting perspective because to an outsider, the Caucasus, the vast Siberian land, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, everything makes up the country of Russia. However, through this novel we can clearly see that there is a Russia within Russia and no matter how much the non-ethnic Russians are considered to be Russian citizens (россияне), they can never become true Russians (русские), and the Wall becomes a physical representation of the mental divide.

Warning for readers: If you are not familiar with the general history of the Caucasus region, e.g. Imam Shamil, relationship between the Caucasus and Moscow, you will have a hard time understanding the context of the story. Moreover, this translation keeps many of the Dagestani words intact rather than translating them to English. While this can make one appreciative of the linguistic diversity of Dagestan, if you are not familiar with some Russian and/or Islamic Arabic and Farsi, then you may have a hard time understanding what they mean. There is a glossary at the end, but you may have to go back and forth many times which disrupts the flow. I personally would have liked to have the meanings of the words as footnotes.

Overall, I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in Russian literature.

[Anton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Вот скажи, Махмуд, что на свете маленькое и большое одновременно?
– Не знаю, отец, – отвечаю я.
– Это Дагестан, – объяснял мне отец. – Ты только подумай, какой он маленький, а сколько в нем уживается народов и обычаев, языков и талантов, животных и растений.

хороший роман, который я бы охарактеризовал как постсоветскую постколониальную литературу. очаровал он меня по ряду причин. прежде всего, конечно, сеттинг — современный Дагестан, на границе с которым Россия выстраивает стенку, тем самым создавая очень напряжённую ситуацию: полиэтнический Дагестан начинает кипеть от желания представителей различных народов воспользоваться ситуаций и наконец добиться справедливости. но все усугубляется тем, что власть захватывают фундаменталисты ("лесные", "бородатые", как их зовут местные), желающие создать исламское государство.

любопытно, что события одновременно вызывают параллели и ассоциации с тем, что сейчас происходит в Афганистане, и что происходило во времена Гражданкой войны 1918-1922/4 гг.

благодаря тому, что героев в романе несколько (хотя центральный все же Шамиль, которому слегка за 20), в повествовании уделяется внимание как обычаям, традициям и истории региона (даже до Октябрьской революции), так и различным мнениям на их счёт.

правда, удивительно, что роман написан девушкой, а женские персонажи — очень второстепенны. понятно, что регион очень патриархальный, но от этого ещё интереснее было бы услышать женский голос. две основные героини романа — это возлюбленные Шамиля: фундаменталистка Мадина и современная/секулярная, но считающаяся с традициями Ася. кажется, обе символизирует два противоположных пути, по которому может двигаться Дагестан: возможно поэтому Аси совсем мало, ведь это ещё неизведанная территория (секулярная), а Мадины побольше, но и она будто начинает сомневаться в своих целях и ценностях (фундаментализм, как известно, всегда настаивает на возврате к "традиции", прошлому).

отдельно увлек язык, на котором говорят герои. это русский язык, но совершенно иной русский: богатый местными междометиями, сленгом, манерами, понятиями, которые не понять без перевода, шутками и т.д. (текст, конечно же, снабжён словарем/сносками.)

“Вах” — сказал Ленин, и все подумали, что он даг.

P.S. словил вайб а-ля "Разжимая кулаки" Коваленко и "Теснота" Балагова, особенно в прологе. хочу еще!

кстати, удивился, что русскоязычных рецензий/отзывов нет вообще, хотя и сам на книгу вышел через Calvert Journal

[Shelley Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book imagines an Islamist takeover of the Republic of Dagestan, seemingly inspired by what happened briefly in parts of Dagestan and Chechnya in 1999 and in an eeiry foretelling of ISIS’s establishment of a caliphate a couple yearsafter the book was published. Ganieva explores how characters from all walks of life would respond to this new reality and to rumors that Russia is building a wall to separate itself from this new Caucasian Emirate. I think for American Muslims, similar imaginings only seem to come from a place of bigotry and Islamophobia, so it was interesting to see these ideas play out in a place where these threats are more real.

Ganieva focuses a lot on how Dagestanis navigate changing times and various tugs to its social and cultural fabric leading up to the takeover. The characters have many conversations about “so-and-so” having become “too ______(insert here: religious, extreme, conservative, wild, secular, out of touch with tradition, etc.)”. These bits were interesting, however I found it boring that there seemed to be an underlying message throughout the book that a woman’s level of freedom is intrinsically tied to how much she covers (or doesn’t). I’m not sure if that message was the author's intent, but it is an outdated view of hijab and modest dress in general (unless if it is being worn by force, of course) and I would have enjoyed a more nuanced take on that note.

While there were aspects of this book that I really enjoyed, it didn’t quite work for me overall. Ganieva gives a really lovely portrait of Dagestani culture and history, and I loved the somewhat whimsical element brought by the “Mountain of Celebrations.” The ending was heartbreakingly beautiful! Overall, though, I felt the story was a bit scattered, it was hard to keep track of the many characters, and many plot developments occurred in a very vague manner.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read various travelogues and histories of the Caucuses in the past, I was intrigued to try this translated novel from Dagestan. The Russian empire has always had a troubled relationship with its colonized Caucasian territories, and the backdrop to this story is a rumor that Russia has built a literal wall to separate and control access to Dagestan. This creates a flurry of uncertainty and tension, as various fundamentalists attempt to seize power in the apparent vacuum. 

The subjects of this disruption are the regular people, a polyglot blend of some thirty different ethnic groups, a host of languages, and varying fidelity to Islam, traditional practices, and Soviet legacy. The book wanders the streets of the capital city of Makhachkala through the eyes of various characters, young and old. The bustle and modernity of the city are contrasted with an idealized vision of traditional life in the mountain villages that everyone has relatives in. This is relayed in conversations, dream sequences, faux textbook articles, a manuscript, and an article from an Islamist newspaper. The overall effect reminded me of the collage effect of John Dos Passos's USA trilogy.

Although the details are specific to Dagestan -- the struggle of an educated multicultural society to exist normally and thrive in a weak state under the threat of religious fundamentalism is a sadly widespread one. Definitely worth reading by anyone with an interest in the Caucuses or post-Soviet literature.

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

In one of Russia’s southern republics, a mountainous zone bordering the Caspian Sea, Georgia and Azerbaijan to the south and Chechnya to the west, something unsettling is afoot. Makhachkala (and presumably the rest of Dagestan) is rife with rumours that Russia is building a wall, demarcating the republic, closing its borders and pandering to its nationalist forces seeking the exclusion of the dangerous ones from the Caucuses. Makhachkala itself is in turmoil: ethnic nationalist fervour is being whipped up with borders held to split peoples off from their sites of national importance; religious fundamentalism is on the rise as the ‘beards’ gain power and seek to enforce their form of sharia. Amid all of this, ordinary people try to make sense of their lives and get on with daily existence.

Alisa Ganieva, in what is claimed to be the first Dagestani novel available in English, has conjured an all too believable political scenario – I kept seeing elements as part Chechen nationalist, part Serbian nationalist, part Islamist, part BJP – of a fundamentalist take-over of part of a state, and that state cutting it adrift; at heart of the geopolitics of the novel is a sense that Russia decides that its on-going Caucuses wars are just too demanding and it is time to let its troublesome mountainous southern republics sink on their own. Most of this is my wrapping around the narrative of collapse Ganieva builds through the eyes and experiences of a small network of friends and kin centred on Shamil, a 20-something drifter, part journalist, part writer, part coffee bar frequenter, all precariously surviving in a changing, unstable, unpredictable post-Soviet world.

Gathered around Shamil we have a disparate group of friends and peers, some away in Moscow and elsewhere studying, others more local none of whom seem to have any specific jobs: welcome to the life of the post-Soviet millennial. Alongside this we have his extended family, his maybe, or not, fiancée’s kin, the various uncles, aunties and cousins who make up his world, existing as it does outside but on the margins of Dagestan’s new élite with its crazy wealth, indulgent self-absorption and celebrity associations. Through all of this Ganieva paints a bleak picture of the present and of the options that seem to be available for change: on the one hand we have a reactionary patriarchal nationalism dressed up as ‘political Islam’, while on the other we have a romantic return to the mountains and villages. Both are backward looking, with a third option of fleeing, south the Azerbaijan or Georgia – going north being prevented by the Wall that no-one sees but is known to exist, confirmed by rumour-become-truth.

Shamil steps back from his path forward when Madina, his fiancée announces she is ‘taking the veil’ and joining the rebels in the mountains and forests, and stumbles when his cousin Asya argues that they should flee to the south – but we stay with him as events catch up, as he needs to make choices and act as the extremes of his world become its major players and as conflict, war and turmoil become all there is. His millennial precarity, his life of getting by is not sufficient to deal with this new scenario – but this is no bildungsroman and neither is it necessarily pessimistic or defeatist.

Weddings, three of them, play a key role in the novel, carrying symbolic weight. In one case, the wedding is a marker of freedom, opportunity and safety in what is in the mountain villages. In one, the wedding is a space of liminal danger, when two families are concurrently two and one, when new alliances are formed but do so in moments of instability and uncertainty – this liminal wedding is a moment of extreme danger when social and cultural instability and change combines with relaxation, leading to profound and retrograde change. In the third we have either a moment of healing and redemption, or of utter and complete loss: Ganieva does well to leave this a floating and uncertain denouement. Yet woven through all of these moments of change is the wider socio-political change, the promise of a village as the ‘Mountain of Celebration’ hovers before Shamil as a place of safety and redemption, of security away from the turmoil of social collapse and the struggles of everyday existence.

Ganieva (and her translators) have a fine sense of both lightness and mounting doom and crisis as Shamil’s circle of friends and kin are drawn into or experience the mounting tensions, and as the protagonist forces themselves splinter and divide, as the offers of romanticism (mountain nostalgic or religious reactionary) are unable to bring about their promised safe havens and solutions. There have been other novels that have sought to explore ‘political Islam’, but this places the protagonists firmly within the faith – this is not a struggle between ‘Islamists’ and ‘us’, this is a struggle within and between ways of being Islamic, and for that reason carries so much more power than those who write from the outside of a challenge from some monolithic Other, because it exposes the monolith as non-existent.

Best of all, this is also, for me, a welcome change from much of the other post-Soviet literature I have read: this is not angry young men in the big cities, neither is it nostalgic yearning (even though I enjoy Akunin’s Imperial-era crime fiction) or sardonic parody (much as I love Kurkov), but neither is it in form necessarily realist – the narrative moves between narrator focus on different characters, between surreal and highly realist forms, between the realist narrative and excerpts from poems and novels written by protagonists, between the machinations of distant power and the travails of everyday existence. All the while, it retains its focus on the very real issue of dialogue between Russia and its Muslim populations – it is no mystery that it was shortlisted for nearly every major Russian literary award.

The Mountain and the Wall deserves to be widely read (and there is a handy, if incomplete, glossary of both Arabic and a range of Dagestani terms). I’ll be watching out for other work by Ganieva.

[Jacob MacDonald · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was something didactic in the voice of the book which rubbed me the wrong way. I'm not sure if it's from Ganieva or her translator: I read an excerpt from an upcoming novel translated by someone else and the prose was similar in some ways but with a lot more bounce. The inserted socialist realist text suggests it may be an explicit choice, but to me it made the novel feel more like it was about Dagestan than of Dagestan. The variety in perspective, ambiguous characters and ideologies, and willingness to let things happen off-page make it a interesting read despite the hazy plot. There are also a few moments - all the mountain scenes but the last, for example - which read as pictures of syncretic practice. I liked the ambiguity of the treatment, so wouldn't want to see any more that would "clarify the meaning". But I did think they were the most beautiful sections and a secondary skeleton.