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Повести последних дней / Tales of the Last Days #2
The Matiushin Case
The Matiushin Case is one of the darkest and most powerful works of fiction to appear in Russian in the last twenty years. Deriving, like Captain of the Steppe (2013, And Other Stories), from Oleg Pavlov’s own traumatic experience as a conscript in the last years of the Soviet Union, it follows the ordeals of Matiushin, a sensitive, disoriented young man, damaged by brutality first within his family and then in the army. Indebted to the 'labour camp writing’ traditions pioneered by Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov, the novel is much more than an exposé of society’s ills. Its greatest achievement lies in the tension between the horrific realities of conscript life and the uniquely dreamlike, timeless style through which Pavlov portrays them. Matiushin's 'crime and punishment' emerge from this tension with compelling inevitability; the victim turns killer. The hell that Pavlov describes is real and societal, but above all psychological, and, as such, no less universal than that described by Dante or Dostoevsky.
213 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1997
5 people are currently reading
143 people want to read
About the author
Oleg Pavlov
18 books8 followersOleg Pavlov (Russian: Олег Олегович Павлов; born: March 16, 1970 in Moscow) was a prominent Russian writer, and a winner of the Russian Booker Prize.
Born in Moscow, he served in the Interior Ministry troops near the city of Karaganda. The events that Pavlov portrayed in his stories and novels were inspired by his own experiences as a prison camp guard.
During his service, Pavlov suffered a head injury, was hospitalised, and spent over a month in a psychiatric ward. This allowed him to be released from the army before the end of the mandatory two-year military service. He went on to study at the Institute of Literature in Moscow.
He was only 24 years old when his first novel, Kazennaya skazka, was published in the Novy Mir Russian monthly magazine. He was noticed by the critics and the Russian Booker Prize jury, which short-listed the novel for the 1995 prize.
His next novel was The Matiushin Case (1997).
Pavlov received the Russian Booker Prize in 2002 for his book "Ninth Day Party in Karaganda: or the Story of the Recent Days" (Karagandinskiye deviatiny).
Pavlov was also the author of articles on literature, historical and social aspects of life in Russia, as well as numerous essays. In his 2003 book "The Russian Man in the 20th Century" he wrote about Russian life, not only based on his personal experience, but also on numerous letters received by the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Foundation in the early 1990s and given to him by the famous Russian writer and dissident and his wife, Natalia.
Oleg Pavlov was said to be one of the most gifted examples of what has been dubbed the “renaissance in Russian literature.”
Pavlov’s novel Asystole (colloquially “cardiac flatline”) was about the tragic essence of human life, the loneliness of the individual in the world of people on the importance and power of love. The novel reads like a confession. Its name sounds like a diagnosis. Asystole - cessation of cardiac activity, cardiac arrest. But the capacity to love gives meaning to life, had been languishing. The novel was published in 2009, prompting the reader an emotional shock, becoming, according to critics, one of the major literary events of recent times. The epigraph to it could be the lines of the European philosopher Emile Cioran Michel: "health - lack of feeling, and therefore - unreality. Ceased to suffer, will cease to exist."
Pavlov died of a heart attack in 2018, aged 48.
Born in Moscow, he served in the Interior Ministry troops near the city of Karaganda. The events that Pavlov portrayed in his stories and novels were inspired by his own experiences as a prison camp guard.
During his service, Pavlov suffered a head injury, was hospitalised, and spent over a month in a psychiatric ward. This allowed him to be released from the army before the end of the mandatory two-year military service. He went on to study at the Institute of Literature in Moscow.
He was only 24 years old when his first novel, Kazennaya skazka, was published in the Novy Mir Russian monthly magazine. He was noticed by the critics and the Russian Booker Prize jury, which short-listed the novel for the 1995 prize.
His next novel was The Matiushin Case (1997).
Pavlov received the Russian Booker Prize in 2002 for his book "Ninth Day Party in Karaganda: or the Story of the Recent Days" (Karagandinskiye deviatiny).
Pavlov was also the author of articles on literature, historical and social aspects of life in Russia, as well as numerous essays. In his 2003 book "The Russian Man in the 20th Century" he wrote about Russian life, not only based on his personal experience, but also on numerous letters received by the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Foundation in the early 1990s and given to him by the famous Russian writer and dissident and his wife, Natalia.
Oleg Pavlov was said to be one of the most gifted examples of what has been dubbed the “renaissance in Russian literature.”
Pavlov’s novel Asystole (colloquially “cardiac flatline”) was about the tragic essence of human life, the loneliness of the individual in the world of people on the importance and power of love. The novel reads like a confession. Its name sounds like a diagnosis. Asystole - cessation of cardiac activity, cardiac arrest. But the capacity to love gives meaning to life, had been languishing. The novel was published in 2009, prompting the reader an emotional shock, becoming, according to critics, one of the major literary events of recent times. The epigraph to it could be the lines of the European philosopher Emile Cioran Michel: "health - lack of feeling, and therefore - unreality. Ceased to suffer, will cease to exist."
Pavlov died of a heart attack in 2018, aged 48.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 21, 2016
The Matiushin Case won the Russian Booker Prize in 2002; another of Pavlov's novels, Captain of the Steppe, the author's first novel, was nominated for the Russian Booker Prize in 1995, when the author was just 24 years old. 24 -- that's just mind boggling, and it tells me that this is one very talented writer, which of course I figured out while reading this novel.
I have to say that it's a good thing that I don't mind bleak in my reading, since no light seems to shine through anywhere in this story. That's not a bad thing -- on the contrary, sometimes people in books don't have happy lives, just as in real life there are people for whom life isn't always lived on the sunny side. And while several literary people have pointed out what they see as this novel's flaws, I don't care -- I was very taken with this novel. For me this was one hell of a reading experience. When I feel like I'm locked into a claustrophobic, hazy hell along with an already-damaged character and that there's no possibility of escape until the end, well, to me that's a sign of a good book. Disturbing, yes, but if I'm that disturbed as a reader, well then the author's done his job.
The reality is that it is not a happy world Matiushin is living in here, which we discover as the book follows him from childhood to his time as a young Soviet Army soldier, where he ends up as a guard at a horrific Soviet labor camp aka The Zone. As a child he grew up in an unhappy, unstable home with his mother, a brother and an overbearing, often violent and drunk military father; as a young recruit he finds himself in a world of corruption, mind-numbing routine, violence, and brutality among his fellow soldiers. But it's the aha-moment ending that really got to me, one I never saw coming, and one that afforded an entirely different perspective on some earlier parts of this novel.
Obviously I haven't really given much away here, and it's better that way in case anyone decides to read it sometime down the road. Anyone at all interested in literature reflecting the Soviet era should not miss this book -- while it has many of the same thematic elements as a lot of other literature of its time, there's something different in this one, causing the story to worm its way into my brain and refuse to leave. It's certainly hard to read on an emotional level but in the long run, it's another book that examines human nature in a very different way, so it's very much worth the time.
I have to say that it's a good thing that I don't mind bleak in my reading, since no light seems to shine through anywhere in this story. That's not a bad thing -- on the contrary, sometimes people in books don't have happy lives, just as in real life there are people for whom life isn't always lived on the sunny side. And while several literary people have pointed out what they see as this novel's flaws, I don't care -- I was very taken with this novel. For me this was one hell of a reading experience. When I feel like I'm locked into a claustrophobic, hazy hell along with an already-damaged character and that there's no possibility of escape until the end, well, to me that's a sign of a good book. Disturbing, yes, but if I'm that disturbed as a reader, well then the author's done his job.
The reality is that it is not a happy world Matiushin is living in here, which we discover as the book follows him from childhood to his time as a young Soviet Army soldier, where he ends up as a guard at a horrific Soviet labor camp aka The Zone. As a child he grew up in an unhappy, unstable home with his mother, a brother and an overbearing, often violent and drunk military father; as a young recruit he finds himself in a world of corruption, mind-numbing routine, violence, and brutality among his fellow soldiers. But it's the aha-moment ending that really got to me, one I never saw coming, and one that afforded an entirely different perspective on some earlier parts of this novel.
Obviously I haven't really given much away here, and it's better that way in case anyone decides to read it sometime down the road. Anyone at all interested in literature reflecting the Soviet era should not miss this book -- while it has many of the same thematic elements as a lot of other literature of its time, there's something different in this one, causing the story to worm its way into my brain and refuse to leave. It's certainly hard to read on an emotional level but in the long run, it's another book that examines human nature in a very different way, so it's very much worth the time.
November 5, 2020
A second pretty depressing book in succession this week..but, look at it another way, there's always someone worse off than you, though few people will have it worse than Matiushin.
Pavlov's novel follows his relentlessly miserable life, from his troubled childhood in the shadow of his domineering father and his rebellious older brother, to his experiences as a young man in the Soviet army. It is not a plot driven novel, rather a commentary on the bleak atmosphere of the declining years of the Soviet Union. Troubled childhoods are not rare in novels, but the numbing routine and detailed descriptions of daily life and violence in the Soviet army make this a very different read.
Some of the writing is based on the author's own experiences; his father too was abandoned as an infant in a graveyard, and he too, was a conscript in the last years of the USSR.
It is the second in a 'loose' trilogy (Tales Of The Last Days), or rather, three unconnected books based on Soviet outposts in the Republic's final days. This is far more savage and brutal though than the first, The Captain Of The Steppe, as I said at the outset. It explores the effect of steady degradation and how humans somehow cling to survive, and some don't; it is particularly dark reading and won't be for everyone.
I will attempt, over the next months, to prepare myself for the third, Requiem For A Soldier.
Pavlov's novel follows his relentlessly miserable life, from his troubled childhood in the shadow of his domineering father and his rebellious older brother, to his experiences as a young man in the Soviet army. It is not a plot driven novel, rather a commentary on the bleak atmosphere of the declining years of the Soviet Union. Troubled childhoods are not rare in novels, but the numbing routine and detailed descriptions of daily life and violence in the Soviet army make this a very different read.
Some of the writing is based on the author's own experiences; his father too was abandoned as an infant in a graveyard, and he too, was a conscript in the last years of the USSR.
It is the second in a 'loose' trilogy (Tales Of The Last Days), or rather, three unconnected books based on Soviet outposts in the Republic's final days. This is far more savage and brutal though than the first, The Captain Of The Steppe, as I said at the outset. It explores the effect of steady degradation and how humans somehow cling to survive, and some don't; it is particularly dark reading and won't be for everyone.
I will attempt, over the next months, to prepare myself for the third, Requiem For A Soldier.
July 9, 2022
I found the first part of this book intriguing, but as it went on I found it just too depressing.
September 17, 2019
Described on the blurb on the back of the book as darkly comic, it was certainly very dark.
The story follows the life of Matiushin from his childhood, where there were few moments of colour, to his time in the Russian army guarding a prison camp in Kazakhstan. The miserable, disorientating, sleep-deprived, bullied life of the soldiers make their position seem no better than the convicts they are guarding. Oleg Pavlov served in the army, as a guard in prison camp, before suffering a head injury and spending his last army days in a psychiatric ward. The picture he paints therefore comes from his own experiences. Often Matiushin, and the story, loses all track of time, particularly on an endless train journey across the Steppe, leaving the reader as unbalanced as the soldiers. There are few bright moments for Matiushin, and these are soon crushed.
It is not a book that is going to be used in a recruiting campaign for the Russian army anytime soon.
The story follows the life of Matiushin from his childhood, where there were few moments of colour, to his time in the Russian army guarding a prison camp in Kazakhstan. The miserable, disorientating, sleep-deprived, bullied life of the soldiers make their position seem no better than the convicts they are guarding. Oleg Pavlov served in the army, as a guard in prison camp, before suffering a head injury and spending his last army days in a psychiatric ward. The picture he paints therefore comes from his own experiences. Often Matiushin, and the story, loses all track of time, particularly on an endless train journey across the Steppe, leaving the reader as unbalanced as the soldiers. There are few bright moments for Matiushin, and these are soon crushed.
It is not a book that is going to be used in a recruiting campaign for the Russian army anytime soon.
November 29, 2020
The last line of the book about sums up my response to it -- "He fancied that he had left this life exactly as he arrived in this world when he was born: without feeling anything." The book begins with an incredibly eventful opening chapter; from there chapter becomes a compelling Dantean vision of the hell of military life in the late Soviet Union. However, the back half of the book offers little relief or sense that there is a world outside of the "zone" that Mattiushin gets sent to. The ending is climactic, but ultimately left me unmoved. I appreciated a number of gorgeous (or impressively horrid) descriptive passages, but ultimately was not entranced by the story.
June 17, 2015
This book was certainly not an easy read. The blurb said it was inspired by the author's experience of the declining Soviet Union, and it was a bleak and depressing story. I am amazed that the main character actually made it to the end of the book as he was brutalised so many times, and in so many different ways. I guess it is in a way the story of his triumph over all he experienced.
May 9, 2021
An intense and troubling story of the moral degradation in the last years of the USSR as reflected through the most crooked of mirrors: Soviet Military. Immersive and innovative writing; dark and hopeless reality. (For full disclosure, I read the novel in the original.)
August 10, 2014
A superb translation by Andrew Bromfield. But a very dark work about the brutality of a modern Soviet prison camp in Kazakhstan. Borat, it ain't.
April 10, 2024
Nope. Decent ending that caught my attention but the rest.... boring.
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March 10, 2015"Full of dark humor and dark characters, this book, while not for the faint of heart, is nevertheless an intriguing view into a life that experiences much pain and hardship with very little that is positive or beautiful to relieve its characters of the cruelty of their world." - Elizabeth Schaulat, University of Oklahoma
This book was reviewed in the March 2015 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our website: http://bit.ly/18wG6EW
This book was reviewed in the March 2015 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our website: http://bit.ly/18wG6EW
June 13, 2017
For my full review click on the link below:
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews