Konrad and Alexandra

by Rolf Gross

Konrad and Alexandra is a major new novel that defies simple classification. It could be considered a modified Bildungsroman but transcends that genre in scope and part historical romance, part psychological development, part tragedy with strong spiritual undercurrents. The novels of Umberto Ecco, Robert Musil, and Vladimir Nabokov come to mind. It evokes the love and lives of Konrad, a German botanist, professor in St. Petersburg, and Alexandra Dadiani, the daughter of an old aristocratic family in idyllic, exotic Georgia. At the center of the novel stands the intelligent and willful Alexandra, a “sister-in-arms” of such contemporary Russian women as Lou Andreas-Salomé, Gala Dali, and Anna Akhmatova. Supported by an unwaveringly faithful Konrad, Alexandra escapes from the subconscious limitations of her matriarchal ethnic background. In fascinating detail the author describes her dramatic confrontations with the Italian Renaissance, analytical psychology, Theosophy, the concept of time, abstract art, and atonal music. At the same time Alexandra’s Georgian inheritance, a gift of clairvoyance sends her on a fearless exploration of the shamanic realm. Eventually she becomes a healer. When in 1943 Stalin deports all ethnic Germans to Central Asia, Konrad and Alexandra disappear in the chaos of the Soviet Union. Loosely woven into this narrative is the diary of their grandson who for many years searches for his grandparents and his own roots in Georgia. Inadvertedly he becomes a witness to the intellectual collapse of the Soviet Union.

704 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2000