Radiant Terminus

by Antoine Volodine, Jeffrey Zuckerman (Translator)

"The most patently sci-fi work of Antoine Volodine's to be translated into English, Radiant Terminus takes place in a Tarkovskian landscape after the fall of the Second Soviet Union. Most of humanity has been destroyed thanks to a number of nuclear meltdowns, but a few communes remain, including one run by Solovyei, a psychotic father with the ability to invade people's dreams--including those of his daughters--and torment them for thousands of years. When a group of damaged individuals seek safety from this nuclear winter in Solovyei's commune, a plot develops to overthrow him, end his reign of mental abuse, and restore humanity. Fantastical, unsettling, and occasionally funny, Radiant Terminus is a key entry in Volodine's epic literary project that--with its broad landscape, ambitious vision, and interlocking characters and ideas--calls to mind the best of David Mitchell"--

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, France, Literature, French Literature, Dystopia, Apocalyptic

488 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Antoine Volodine is the primary pseudonym of a French author. Some of his books have been published in sf collections, but his style, which he has called "post-exoticism", does not fit neatly into any common genre.

He publishes under several additional pseudonyms, including Lutz Bassmann and Manuela Draeger.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

11.8.2021 Reread. Either the flames destroy or build me, doesn’t matter.
This wonderful novel appeared both more meaningful with an almost elastic world view upon the second reading. It is harsh meditation. Grim but upright, thank to either shamanism or revolutionary hope.
Ubiquity and polychrony had long been his fate.

Radiant Terminus is a stunning achievement, the hum of a damaged reactor deep in the taiga, where ancient animistic tropes are filtered through the ill fated Second Soviet Union. Irradiated but ideologically pure, I truly loved everything about this novel. The novel is both lyrically transportive and fundamentally bleak. It is a visceral, a gloss over entire genres of invented literature and a paen to a possibility where perhaps our human concerns are best kept intact within the secure bosom of the Gulag.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Volodine’s masterpiece: a strange, bewildering, breathtaking, frightening, and spectacular post-nuclear post-exotic epic, rendered into exquisite English in this exquisite edition.

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I finished this novel I began to cry.

But: I have no idea what this novel is supposed to mean. I could read up about it, I suppose. But even with more knowledge, I'm not sure there would be a way for me to have loved it more, or to have been touched by it more, or to have been made to think more, than the choice I made, which was to read this very complicated and mysterious novel as a dialogue, a 1-1 relationship between me and the words on the page.

So how to describe this complicated knot of feeling, now that I've reached the end?

What I'm feeling has to do with a sense that this novel stands for the permanence of human relationships--that our thoughts and feelings and actions as thinking creatures can create a reality that endures every kind of assault.

Described here is a horrific world. And yet the characters trapped in this horrific world never fully despair. And the story itself, however violent and seemingly hopeless, always holds out in the end a thread of fragile hope that humanity (not just people, but their best selves) will endure.

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

The contents of Radiant Terminus are given several possible origins from within the text. Is this all the literary creation of Solovyei, mad poet-shaman of the post-apocalyptic irradiated taiga? If so, has it all been recited onto ancient wax tubes, spoken to himself in a constant world-creating undertone, or perhaps it is a theatrical creation enacted by Solovyei through undead puppets in the liminal space of some hazy between-life or Bardo state. Otherwise, it could perhaps have been sung by two zombies in an abandoned train car somewhere on the steppes, over several centuries, even more centuries after the end of all life and civilization. Or is it an endless novel written by a lone survivor, synthesizing all the books and pamphlets she'd read centuries before and half-remembered, mixing in her own memories, dreams, and hallucinations. It could also, of course, be actually happening, but certainly only in some state of limbo, dream, or death, if so. Or perhaps it's a story being recited, cell to cell, by the incarcerated revolutionary post-exotic writers of Volodine's other works (who are name-checked here as vanished precursors whose works have in fact outlived them).

Reality and text are slippery here, so slippery that they slide from the grasp entirely and spiral into endless void (or a reactor core 2km sub-surface), leaving only people (or perhaps puppets) and events (non-events). Volodine's strength is in constructing the bewildering multi-tiered reality in which he, his works, and their stories all exist uneasy equilibrium. What he's doing, over many books, by many pseudonyms, is fascinating. His strength is not exactly in prose style itself, which tends to drift and lose focus. I'm still figuring out if his strength is exactly in telling a story. There's much to fascinate here, in Volodine's post-collapse universe and oneiric cooperative farm, but he undermines his protagonists as reliable humans, and sloshes them against eachother until they almost lose form entirely. My sympathies cling to them, fighting for someone to hold onto through the end of the narrative, but Volodine seems determined to frustrate this impulse. His post-exotic, post-hope, post-human multiverse may also be post-character. I can't fully decide whether, in a 460-page epic, I'm able to accept that. It's especially telling that I held out hopes for 300 or so pages that a character dead in the opening section, designated deader than anyone else in the story, would somehow arise and bring it all together for me. Or maybe a world that manages to make me think this way deserves my (albeit puzzled) admiration all the more.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶]

As I sit here pondering the after-effects of Radiant Terminus, I'm listening to Bardo Pond, an appropriate accompaniment given the liminal nature of this strange and disconcerting novel. I can't say it was a particularly pleasant trip through the irradiated taiga. No, the dark sorcerer Solovyei, who works in plutonium like a sculptor handles clay, made certain that I would experience the slow stab wounds of immortality as closely as the written word would take me to the cold steel blade. I can assign it no rating, except perhaps one symbolic red star.

There is a mythic quality to this post-apocalyptic story, if one can call it a story. It is in fact a tightly coiled string of narratives, circling itself endlessly, smothering in its horrifying oneirism. Set in a vast irradiated zone following the fall of the Second Soviet Union, which spanned the globe, the narrative grows through the influence of Solovyei, a god-like figure inexplicably bestowed with immortality through early contact with nuclear radiation, which has flooded the taiga and its surroundings after an epic failure of the ubiquitous reactors providing energy to the towns and kolkhozes of the region. Solovyei's headquarters is the Radiant Terminus kolkhoz in the Levanidovo. Solovyei wields his dark power in unpredictable ways, meddling in the dreams and minds of all around him, in particular his three beautiful mutant daughters, each born from a different unknown woman, to which he has passed on his immortality and with whom he has an unnatural obsession. And up on a hill beyond the kolkhoz, inside a vast warehouse, lives the Gramma Udgul, Solovyei's first wife from long ago, who shares his plutonium-fueled immortality, and now tends the sunken reactor core, periodically feeding it with offerings of irradiated materials.

Into (or sprung from?) Solovyei's orbit comes the soldier Kronauer, another central figure in the book. He and his two comrades have fled the city, which has fallen to the counter-revolutionaries. He arrives in the Levanidovo, seeking aid for his sick comrade, in the company of one of Solovyei's daughters, whom he has rescued from near-death in the forest. Thus begins an often excruciating descent into Solovyei's world for both Kronauer and the reader. Violated at times by streams of Solovyei's dark hermetic poetry, the narrative weaves between the histories of the people surrounding Solovyei. It is most effective at conceiving of and communicating the passage of time for those who know no death, those solitary figures trudging through long, lonely centuries, characterized at times by a savage boredom.

At the center of the novel is the question of how much of what is happening is 'real' and how much is merely a creation of Solovyei's disturbed mind. Who has free will, if anyone. Who can and will die, if anyone. Is it all happening in the Bardo or in Solovyei's mind or somewhere else, irreal, surreal, or real. These questions are perhaps not answerable, but they lead to much speculation nonetheless.

[Cosimo · Rating 2 out of 5]

In relativa agonia

La maggior parte del romanzo risulta illeggibile: monotono, noioso, vuoto, insignificante, senza ragione; la parte finale, costituita da brevi racconti, è di buona scorrevolezza e intensità. Ho apprezzato molto le altre opere di Antoine Volodine pubblicate; invece Terminus Radioso mi sembra un romanzo superficiale, dispersivo, scritto in modo precario e non curato. I temi dell'autore vengono riproposti in maniera ridondante, ripetitiva e artificiale: una prosa infeconda segue un sviluppo innaturale e strumentale. Lo sdoppiamento tra realtà e sogno, la narrazione metaletteraria e oscura, lo sconfinamento tra mondo dei vivi e mondo dei morti, la distopia di un mondo postatomico e apocalittico nella taiga siberiana di un universo postsovietico, uscito dalla catastrofe del capitalismo imperialista, la contaminazione di una natura mutante: tutte realtà che si trovano in Volodine e qui non hanno spessore né contrasto, sono in difetto per originalità di visione e di forza evocativa. Un'atmosfera grigia che accomuna il dissidente e il disertore, il delitto, l'esplosione, il deserto umano e la filosofia buddista, dove persino il piano allucinatorio appare fittizio, perde la sostanza obliqua riflettendosi su uno schermo narrativo piatto e convenzionale, vagando nella tirannia del pensiero, del sesso e del tempo. La storia è ambientata in un kolchoz dove i reattori nucleari hanno distrutto la natura e la radioattività ha estinto la specie umana: ci sono campi di lavoro che sono abissi di olio nero, corvi magici e esseri sovrannaturali, un mostruoso vorticare di sciamani, negromanti e cantori dell'epica comunista, di sogni da violare e crimini violenti e erranti. Nulla in rilievo rispetto alle cose ovunque già create e meditate.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dopo una catastrofe nucleare e il crollo della Seconda Unione Sovietica un soldato fuggitivo si rifugia a Terminus Radioso, kolchoz contaminato guidato da mutanti immortali e immorali.

Un romanzo assolutamente all'altezza della sua fama. Un libro post tutto, creato per non offrire certezze. I personaggi narrati sono vivi o morti? Si muovo in un sogno? O nel Bardo (una sorta di limbo)? E' tutto un gioco metaletterario sul processo di scrittura (come nella scena dello stupro, "vissuta" da un personaggio e al contempo "inventata" in un racconto da un altro)?

E tutto questo magma concettuale e destrutturato è gestito da Volodine con assoluta maestria, rispettando e sublimando i topoi del romanzo di genere (fantascientifico soprattutto, ma c'è anche spazio per altri generi: fantasy, western, guerra..), così da mantenere una grande leggibilità nonostante tutto, grazie a uno stile di scrittura davvero notevole, capace di rallentamenti prossimi alla stasi e accelerate da lasciare senza fiato come in un giro sull'ottovolante, oltre a una bella dose di ironia.

Un romanzo-mondo, o meglio, post mondo, dato che al suo interno tempo e spazio vengono dilatati fino a privarsi di un senso e fino all'estinzione totale.

[Tyrone_Slothrop (ex-MB) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Post-apocalissi post-esotica post-sovietica

E' una letteratura del dopo , quella di Volodine. Un'idea di scrittura che si pone verso il futuro e oltre il tempo, superando ed inverando tutti i testi distopici ed apocalittici in una sorta di eterna nuova dimensione senza tempo.
L'ambientazione post-sovietica, che Volodine gestisce con cinismo e abile sarcasmo, è perfetta per creare l'entrata in questo vortice extra-temporale che è la "zona" del Levanidovo, popolata solo da essere quasi mitici, morti che resuscitano o (forse) che non muoiono mai veramente. Non mi ha però convinto appieno la dimensione non temporale del testo: più e più volte è ribadito che un mese corrisponde a decine di anni, i personaggi vivono (?) per secoli, però la narrazione sembra rimanere comunque collegata ad un tempo consueto ed ordinario: gli eventi sono comunque verosimili e realistici e potrebbero coinvolgere persone "normali" (se si escludono resurrezioni - comunque mai descritte ma solo date per scontate).
Si realizza quindi uno straniamento sospeso per il lettore, da un lato immerso in uno spazio-tempo ineffabile, dall'altro soggetto all'affabulazione di Volodine che racconta vicende concrete di uomini concreti (o così apparenti).
Forse l'autore risulta troppo preoccupato del lato "ideologico" della sua letteratura post-esotica, da anni propagandata come rivoluzionaria e definitivo inveramento di un rivolgimento culturale basato sull'annullamento dell'autore, sull'apocalisse ambientale e storica, sulla distruzione dei riferimenti culturali convenzionali. Proclami del genere non sono originalissimi, ovviamente e anche molto delle idee alla base di questo testo non sono nuovissime: la "zona" post-sovietica ed esistenziale è debitrice di Tarkovskij, la confusione dei punti di vista narrativi e la frantumazione dell'autore è cifra tipica del post-moderno, la dimensione nè da morti nè da vivi proviene dal buddismo (il Bardo Thodol più volte citato nel testo). Anche lo stile letterario potente, brulicante e immaginifico, sicuramente di ottimo livello, può essere trovato in altri autori dell'Est Europa quali Cartarescu e Krasznahorkai, dove (similmente) la devastazione post-sovietica conduce in altre dimensioni.
Molto valide alcune figure ctoniche ed ataviche come il padre-padrone-demone-dio Soloviei, Nonna Ugdul che vive nonostante il partito e soprattutto il treno di soldati-prigionieri alla ricerca di un campo di lavoro (parte molto felice non sviluppata appieno). Meno riusciti un Kronauer che sembra portare sempre la narrazione su un piano convenzionale- realistico e le figlie di Soloviei, a metà tra vittime e mezze divinità i cui poteri sono sempre accennati e mai realizzati.

[migheleggecose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terminus Radioso

In un tempo indefinito, il mondo ha subito una catastrofe nucleare e la Seconda Unione Sovietica è un’enorme wasteland in cui la vita non sembra più essere quella di prima, la natura non sembra essere più quella di prima e, udite udite, anche il tempo non è più quello che conoscevamo. Tutto nei pressi di Terminus Radioso, un kolchoz in mezzo a questa sconfinata zona contaminata, scorre diversamente: gli umani vagano in una condizione sospesa a metà fra la vita e la morte, il confine fra le due è infatti ormai più sottile che mai; le piante prosperano e inghiottono tutto quello che trovano sul loro cammino ed è impossibile tener traccia di tutte le specie che sono nate dopo il disastro.

Tre soldati sono in fin di vita, bruciati dalle radiazioni e affamati, e il più in salute di loro, Kronauer, si avventura nella foresta per cercare acqua e soccorsi. Qui trova e soccorre una donna semimorta che gli indica la via per il centro abitato più vicino, Terminus Radioso. Qui vive una comunità capeggiata da una coppia di strani anziani: Nonna Udgul, vecchia eroina del partito resa immortale dalle radiazioni, che presidia il sito in cui una pila atomica è sprofondata nel terreno e alimenta l’intero villaggio; e Soloviei, padre della ragazza e di due sorelle, uno sciamano dotato di strani poteri che vede nel soldato appena arrivato una possibile minaccia all’equilibrio del villaggio.
Quando Kronauer scopre che i suoi amici non sono stati trovati dalla pattuglia di soccorso inviata da Soloviei, si ritrova a vivere nella folle comunità di Terminus.

La trama del romanzo parte da questo antefatto per svilupparsi in modo totalmente non lineare: leggere Terminus Radioso significa ritrovarsi sperduti insieme ai protagonisti del racconto in una dimensione sospesa imperscrutabile, una matrioska di sogni e incubi in cui è difficile riconoscere quale pezzo contenga l’altro. Anche il lettore, come tutti gli abitanti del kolchoz, è vittima della dimensione onirica che lo sciamano Soloviei sovrappone alla vita del luogo: a volte sembra diventare lui il narratore della storia, o almeno una delle sue tante forme, e alcuni suoi deliranti monologhi anticipano, spiegano o alterano le cose che succedono. E inoltre ha il potere di riportare in vita le persone, ne assume le sembianze, ne legge i pensieri. Dietro Soloviei non può che nascondersi lo stesso Volodine: gioca con i personaggi e contemporaneamente gioca con noi.
Questa fondamentale impossibilità di capire a pieno cosa sta succedendo, dicevo, avvicina il lettore alla condizione in cui vivono le persone di questo mondo post nucleare: a differenza di altri racconti post apocalittici in cui l’umanità è impegnata a sopravvivere, qui gli esseri umani sono andati oltre la sopravvivenza e continuano a vivere come per inerzia, sfuggono anche spesso alla morte, ma sono tutti intrappolati in una continua ricerca di senso che però non arriva mai, per nessuno, né per loro né per noi. Il crollo della società e dei valori ha portato l’uomo a uno smarrimento più esistenziale che materiale o affettivo: non mancano il cibo e un tetto sopra la testa ma un significato in ciò che si fa. Emblematico in questo senso è l’infinito viaggio in treno che alcuni personaggi, pur di riavere delle certezze, intraprendono nella taiga alla ricerca di un campo di lavoro ancora in funzione che sia disposto a ospitarli e a metterli a lavorare.

Astenersi chiunque cerchi una storia chiara o, appunto, un senso in ciò che legge: in Terminus Radioso prevalgono le sensazioni, le domande sono infinitamente più importanti delle risposte che non vengono date.

Non conoscevo Antoine Volodine e ho scoperto un autore eccezionale. Ogni pagina è intrisa di un’atmosfera che la maggior parte dei romanzi si può solo sognare di avere: raramente mi è capitato di percepire così bene l’idea di smarrimento e di vagabondaggio come in Terminus Radioso e un così perfetto sovrapponimento di onirico e reale. Tutto merito di un’attenzione certosina a ogni particolare nel tratteggiare sia i personaggi che l’ambientazione e di una capacità di scrittura fuori dal comune. Mi sono fermato a leggere e rileggere più volte varie pagine, ammaliato ora da un un campo invaso dalle piante, ora da un dialogo ermetico fra due personaggi memorabili, dalla vita fuori di testa del kolchoz o da una sequenza onirica.

(da migheleggecose.it)

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

After this and Gesell Dome I hope what I pick up next is a little less brutal.

[Inderjit Sanghera · Rating 4 out of 5]

What starts off a a Tarkovskian exploration of a world ravaged by nuclear disaster soon descends into something even darker, as the characters find themselves entrapped in the world of a sinister and supernatural villain, part Tolstoian peasant and part sorcerer, whose sole aim is to torture and torment those around him and hold the people who live in the area known as the ‘Radiant Terminus’ in thrall to him.

Radiant Terminus is not so much frightening because of the existence of the villain Solovyei, but more because of the the bleakness of the world depicted by Volodine, a world of desperation and degradation and shorn of any sense of humanity, a world stripped of its vibrancy and dominated by muted colours and ubiquitous shadows. The malignancy which exists in the world of the Radiant Terminus acts more of a microcosm of the wider world, with Solovyei personifying a world and species which is slowly dying. Kronauer, the main protagonist of the novel, seems to be stuck in a perpetual state of stupor and roused from his sense of ennui by the actions taken by Solovyei in desecrating the body of his friend Vassilissa Marachvili, yet even this action is imbued with a sense of hopelessness as Kronauer is helplessly ensnared and powerless against the almost pervasviness strength of Solovyei, who holds not just the lives but the dreams of those around him in his grip.

‘Radiant Terminus’ starts off as an exploration of a dystopian world but soon descends into mysticism, however this mysticism is symbolic of a world in which humanity is slowly dying and where the last elements of humankind are trapped in the machinations of a monstrous man whose sole purpose is to torment whoever is left.

[Scribble Orca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review to follow post-exotically.

[LindaJ^ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weird and mind-numbing are the first descriptors that come to mind for this book. I struggled to finish it but kept hoping that at some point I would understand what the author was trying to tell me. The characters may be dead or in some intermediate world drifting along in the cosmos. Or all the characters and everything that happens may be the creation of Solovyei, who never dies or never lives. Solovyei tramples in the minds of the characters, makes the dead arise (but not necessarily alive), assumes the shape of an oversized crow and flies around, and is an all around bad guy. The character he does not seem to have created or kept alive is Gramma Udgul, who like him, is unaffected by radiation other than to have aging delayed significantly.

Kronauer is a main character but why escapes me. Apparently he appears in other works by the author. Like David Mitchell, Volodine is apparently creating a universe that spans his work, with some characters reappearing over and over.

The setting for this story is the future - at the time of the collapse of The Second Soviet Union. It starts with three soldiers (Kronauer, Vassia, and Ilyushenko) fleeing what appears to have been the last holdout of The Second Soviet Union. They flee onto the steppes, which have no been able to support live for years due to radiation poisoning. Vassia, lucky for her, dies early on and is unable to be "reawaken" by Solovyei. Ilyushenko gets to die, at least in this book, although he may have already been dead when he died.

Kronauer suffers the worst fate as he is made to exist in some fashion for the whole book, along with Solovyei's three daughters.

The style of this book is quite creative. I remained on the fence for over half the book, but as it got weirder, I began to lose my interest. The last 100 pages were like pulling teeth, but I don't give up on a 468 page book after getting more than 3/4s through it!

[Simone Subliminalpop · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tra sogno e realtà, sempre ad un passo dall'incubo (una pila atomica che vuole solo essere costantemente saziata).
Strani e desolati personaggi si aggiro in una Seconda Unione Sovietica collassata, venga essa rappresentata dall'immensa taiga o dai kolchoz spettrali.
A tratti si rischia di perdersi (o è solo che si Viaggia), ma la scrittura di Volodine, efficace e visionaria, è una guida perfetta.

Cit.

[Francesco · Rating 5 out of 5]

una delle cose più belle mai lette...
Faulkner francese
questo romanzo dovrebbe avere più successo... il suo marketing è stato imbarazzante

questo romanzo può benissimo fare a cazzotti con satantango e fare uno sgambetto ad assalonne assalonne

questo romanzo tolti i classici francesi è il più bel romanzo uscito dal paese della baguette

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

The trouble with reading fiction set in irradiated postapocalyptic Russia is that it gives me nightmares. Can it be a coincidence that I dreamed my entire face was covered in tiny tumours while reading a novel in which everyone has radiation sickness? Radiant Terminus definitely has a nightmarish quality and pervasive atmosphere of doom. Are the characters alive or dead? Is there a difference? The book opens with three comrades who have survived the downfall of the Second Soviet Union dying of radiation poisoning. While attempting to survive, or while dead but still mobile, they variously encounter a train full of soldiers and prisoners searching for a gulag and a village ruled by a terrifying immortal wizard. The immortal wizard dominates the narrative via his ability to enter people's dreams and subject them to his poetry.

Although it reminded me of The Slynx, Radiant Terminus is a French novel disguised as a Russian novel. Antoine Volodine is one pseudonym of a (seemingly anonymous?) French novelist. I think this is elided by reading the English translation. I enjoyed the bits of wordplay that the translation captures:

If there was something he had to do in the next day or so, it was to leave the Levanidovo, leave them all in the dirty and crazy hands of their president and progenitor, and look elsewhere for a refuge to die, pretend to die, pretend to live, or practice a humdrum variation on survival, sousvival, or surmorial.

As well as being a suitably grim and ominous postapocalyptic novel, Radiant Terminus appears to comment on literary tropes. Of particular note is the metatextuality about rape, which is both discussed and occurs repeatedly. At this point a woman is trying to reconstruct the angry feminist literature of the past, casting her sister as the victim:

Here is a new rape scene. Another one. I've systematically avoided describing them in detail. Alluding to them is enough. For victims, it's unbearable. For witnesses, it's equally unbearable. We're confronted with the filthiness of the cock's language, at one moment of another we have to go along with the exhalations of the cock's language, we have the impression of sharing something with the rapists. Into every description of rape comes an element of complicity. I've always avoided that and it's not because I know Myriam Umraik that I'm going to watch this scene objectively, as a witness, or that I'm going to plunge back into the horror subjectively, incarnating myself within her.

I've never come across a novel interrogating its own depictions of rape in this way before. I'm not really sure what to make of it, but definitely found it interesting. Radiant Terminus definitely succeeds at creating an atmosphere of catastrophe and collapse. I will not soon forget the extremely creepy sequence in which Kronauer walks slowly around the Soviet building with his rifle, shooting strange figures with bags over their heads, one of which might be himself. What a disorientatingly dreamlike scene. The imagery and descriptions are pleasant verging on lyrical for plants, but grotesque and horrible for humans and anything they created. The ending appears to be another metatextual comment, rather than the conclusion to any kind of plot. Overall it adds up to a distinctive reading experience, albeit not one I'd recommend without caveats. If you have an interest in postapocalyptic and/or metatextual literature, you are likely to find Radiant Terminus rewarding. If you appreciate extremely grim vibes, likewise. If you're after plot and characterisation, however, this is not the place to find them.

[sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

i thought the first half of volodine's radiant terminus was outstanding. way, way weirder than the "weird fiction" of mieville and vandermeer. offbeat but deadly serious. the way volodine depicted the dream/reality mobius strip was really beautiful, and he handled the confronting r*pe/abuse content with care and insight. but after volodine sets up solovyei's dream invasions and kronauer's fatal encounters with the three daughters, the book seems to stall and never recover. the frequent flights into obscurity in the second half feel bloated, and the leaps forward and back in time seem like a bad joke. that said, from what i've read and heard about volodine, it sounds like his books are very interconnected and benefit from reading a handful of them (as with a writer like bolaño), so i'm hesitant to make a call on him based just on this book.

as a side note, the translation in this was outstanding and open letter deserve full credit for bringing books like this to english readers so quickly.

[Diletta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uno di quei libri che compri, aspetti, e quando finalmente scopri quello che c'è dentro ti chiedi perché quell'esplosione non è avvenuta prima e hai atteso tanto.
Questa intro super emotiva per dire: sciamani, apocalissi, ragazze stregate, soldati sperduti.
Una scrittura stramba, viva, non è possibile mappare i multiversi e si sta bene così. Ma, per assurdo, una struttura super classica, un fantasy in pratica, ma con un immaginario che esplode.

(Un film Ghibli, sfuggito di mano.)

[Bruno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second read. It's amazing. Although I will probably always prefer the more elegiac, carceral books (Songes de Mevlido, especially, and certain passages in Writers and Avec les moines-soldats).

In many ways this is the novel of Solovieï, a maleficent, bizarre creature: shaman and Bluebeard and Solovey-Razboynik (Nightingale-the-Robber). One longs to escape him, but the steppe is the most ensnaring labyrinth of all.

Still. If it doesn't have the heroism of the other books (with their intransigent ultra-leftists and renegades, and their oddly faulty, heretical Buddhists), TR still has gorgeous prose. Gorgeous prose written at, or after, the end of the world: des flots morts de mots déjà morts...

[Matteo C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Folgorante! le prime 150 pagine da storia della letteratura. Sembra incredibile sia letto così poco.

[Domitori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lists as mantras, rants and invocations/ incantations; botany lessons (Naming the Taiga); poetry of decay, deterioration, detritus ("everything crumbled, turned into humus and magma of humid sawdust"); time-stretching ("time took its time flowing, but it flowed"); olfactory writing ("Resin, rotting peat mosses, decomposing trees, marsh gas. Stinking wafts from deep layers of the earth. Scents of bark, viscosities stagnating beneath the bark, mustiness of larvae. Mushrooms. Moist stumps"); uncertain, shifting narrator(s) ("he or I, doesn't matter"); "she makes theater"; "theater or poorly directed dream, doesn't matter"; "that's the ambiguity of ubiquity and achronia"; undead erotics; "cock's language"; Solovyei as Bad Coop, everyone else as Dougie Jones (the Zone meets the Black Lodge in the James Turrell's Dark Space, "void of all markers", with hints of J-horror, heroic bloodshed, naphtha western, film noir, Predator, Under the Skin, and The Birds); empurpled impoverished prose that gets beautifully meta towards the end ("we will forgive the mistakes, absurdities, and impasses in [the] narrative flow, as well as the longeurs, and sometimes, on the contrary, the inexplicable shortcuts or the refusal to exploit or enrich scenes that could have been, or interruptions in the recitative"); permanent Bardo; 7x7=49.

[Héctor Genta · Rating 4 out of 5]

L’umanità immaginata da Volodine in questo libro è abitata da morti che camminano, personaggi inconsapevoli della loro condizione che si aggirano straniati tra le macerie di quel che resta. Post-capitalisti, post-comunisti… post-vivi probabilmente o peggio, perché il dramma del personaggi di Terminus radioso nasce non solo dal fatto di essere morti, ma di essere morti che non riescono a morire completamente, uomini e donne che vivono nei sogni e negli incubi di altri e che neppure lì riescono ad essere liberi, simili per certi versi ai dannati dell'Inferno, condannati ad espiare all’infinito le loro colpe. Burattini, li definisce a un certo punto l’autore, chiamati a recitare a comando una parte. Simulacri che vagano come ubriachi per un mondo deserto, esseri senza regole e principi, con in tasca solo qualche vaga reminiscenza di ideali egualitari. Nessuna redenzione né lieto fine: quelle di Terminus radioso sono pagine cupe, claustrofobiche, che a tratti riecheggiano l’eco della Strada McCarthiana. Il tempo sembra scorrere senza senso, la vita sembra scorrere senza senso. Gli ideali sono diventati illusioni e le illusioni rimpianti: tutto è perso e l’unica cosa che rimane sono i ricordi, quei ricordi ai quali Kronauer, il protagonista, cerca di attaccarsi disperatamente ma che altrettanto inesorabilmente sente scivolare via. Quel che resta sono manciate di sentimenti e soprattutto istinti e pulsioni, flebili segnali di una vita che corre via veloce in attesa che anche l’ultimo uomo si estingua e la natura riprenda il suo posto, una natura trasformata dalle radiazioni create dall’uomo, martoriata ma mai doma e che per tutto il libro rimane in paziente attesa, come una bestia ferita che attende solo il momento della vendetta. Leggendo Volodine, l’impressione è che a volte paghi pegno al proprio dogmatismo, al fatto di aver costruito una letteratura (parlo del post-esotismo) un po’ troppo rigida nella sua architettura, con la conseguenza di essere ripetitiva negli argomenti, nel loro sviluppo e nelle finalità narrative. Da questo punto di vista ho trovato Terminus radioso molto simile ad Angeli minori, che per certi versi ho preferito. P.S.: nella terza di copertina si legge che “Volodine firma un romanzo fosco e ironico che intona un inno all’umorismo del disastro, alla fuga dal reale, alle tecniche di resistenza di fronte al buio, alla notte, alla catastrofe”. Ironico? Umorismo? Tecniche di resistenza al buio? Cioè: questo sarebbe un libro che fa ridere? Se è così confesso che di Terminus radioso io non ho capito niente.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Prepare to enter parallel universes where time collapses on itself--it's circular--the future and the past are always the present, where a 2,000+ year old Gramma feeds and talks to a nuclear reactor core, where you never know if a character is living, dead, or somewhere in between, and where the characters exist mostly in a dreamlike state. The setting is a nuclear wasteland after the fall of the second Soviet Union. The antagonist Solvyei is much too powerful and it's not difficult to figure out what he is supposed to represent in Volodine's politically charged novel.

While dealing with time in a circular fashion so that those previously dead are alive again, and attempting to manipulate people's dreams so that the character never knows if they are in their own dream, someone else's dream, or awake is certainly difficult subject matter, several parts of the book were tedious and redundant. Each time a character entered a different state, the author described it all over again. There were simply too many details. Do the readers really want to know exactly what is being fed to the nuclear reactor core each time Gramma feeds it?

Volodine went to great lengths to ensure the reader doesn't confuse his writing with sci-fi or any other genre. He wants it to be called post-exotic fiction as one of his characters, a writer, makes clear at the end, and as he mentions throughout the novel. Apparently, this is an emerging genre and it seems you must be one of the cogno senti to fully appreciate it.

It would be easy to write this novel off as the rantings of a madman, but Volodine is far too clever to be called a madman. For those with the patience to enter this dreamworld, it's a fascinating place.

[Brooke Salaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite incredibly ambitious work that managed to be both fantastical and frightening in its portrayal of a post-apocalyptic Soviet landscape. We learn of a world inhabited by humans either teetering on the brink of death from radiation sickness or actually dead and maintained in an oneiric existence by a mad and evil genius, Solovyei. Solovyei possesses god-like powers of control over others, thought manipulation, maintenance of life, where death would be merciful, extended over centuries of torment in conditions that are vividly described in all their horrific detail. The filth, stench, lethargy, any element of hope removed makes for a world the term dystopian hardly seems adequate to describe. Kronauer is a former soldier who in trying to save his ill companions has hiked through the taiga to a kolkhoz called the Levanidovo where Solovyei bases his malevolent operation. Kronauer lost his wife to brutal murderers who killed her and other patients of a hospital where she was receiving chemo. She taught him plant identification that he names as he goes, one small vestige of human culture most of which has been lost. The ongoing war (some communist vs. capitalist thing apparently) has wrecked all the nuclear power plants that were the source of all energy even in small villages and they’re now in various stages of meltdown. Kronauer develops disturbing relationships with Solovyei’s three daughters and the Grandma Ugdul who maintains the core and herself is immune to radiation. Solovyei is threatened by this newcomer and engineers his ruin and centuries of torment. Spooky. You leave it happy for humdrum existence.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think Brian Evenson, in his foreword, is right: you should not start here with Volodine. This is a strange, disparate, sometimes aggressively noncommittal book. It's fascinating and intermittently compelling, it has profound things to say and radical, strange ways to say them, but it took me a long time to get through, and I am a rather rabid admirer of Volodine.

If you're already a convert, this is obviously a must-read, and it has many delights and many challenges. Volodine is one of the most profound and interesting writers of the 21st century. But I'd say work your way up to this one.

[Wu Shih · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definito romanzo post moderno, con tutto ciò che di ambiguo questa parola porta con se, è sicuramente un oggetto interessante: in un futuro postatomico inondato da radiazioni, uomini, morti e vivi, semi vivi o immortali, si muovono lenti e confusi, manichini inerti o burattinai inquieti, vagando sperduti e senza meta, o con una meta posticcia, in quel sogno osceno chiamato realtà.

Un mondo senza più senso nè motivi veri per agire, un mondo freddo e solitario dove i rapporti umani sono quasi impossibili, abitati da uomini senza forze in perenne crisi di identità.

[Timothy Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange, thought-provoking/thought-erasing, and bleak, so so bleak. This won't be for everyone, but Volodine certainly sucked me into this world and into this form (genre?) of post exoticism. Now I have to read his other books! Will think about this one further and will (perhaps??) write a review as it gets closer to the American release! Thanks Open Letter for sending an advanced reader copy to my store (Unabridged Bookstore)!

[Nadine in California · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the first two pages as an ebook sample and thought what terrible writing and even worse translating. Luckily I had to read this for a book group, because I started again with a print copy and thought what amazing writing and translating. Once I got used to the rhythm of the writing and the weirdness of this particular bardo, I found so much 'post-exotic' humor and creativity. Definitely a book that works best as a group read.

[Denise · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to read this book for a French literature exam and I found it incredibly annoying on so many levels! The characters are all unsympathetic, there's no plot and there are lots of unnecessary disgusting scenes with a strong focus on gore and bodily fluids which add nothing to a narration that doesn't make any sense! If you are not masochistic don't read this book!

[Miglė · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're down with a fever or just looking for a bit of an escapism from the bleak reality of winter, do not read this book! It's weird, inventive, sometimes funny, but very, very gloomy.

I downloaded a sample and immediately got interested with the premise and the world – after the fall of the second soviet union, some soldiers escape in the irradiated fields and are trying not to die from radiation. (we get a bit of a backstory – every kolkhoz used to have a nuclear reactor, then at some point all of them started going off, irradiating everything) Other soldiers and prisoners (they rotate who is who every week or so) are riding a train in search for a concentration camp, where they hope to become prisoners and get some sense and order introduced into their lives. And in a Radiant Terminus kolkhoz, an immortal necromancer-demiurg Solovyey is ruling the lives and deaths of everyone in it.

That was more or less the first part. The style was dreamy, sometimes going into minute details (for example, plant names), which I enjoyed at the beginning. The characters had (or seemed to have) some stakes in their lives, it was occasionally funny and could be read as a political satire (even if not intended by the author).

In the second half of the book, however, the stakes disappear and the reader is just left to navigate the increasingly depressive dream sequences. As I said, the book was consistent, and there is a reason for that (narrative-wise, and I could also speculate about the intention of the author). SPOILER: We soon learn that everyone is, in fact, dead (oh god), and are trapped in this limbo / hell, run by Solovyey. Solovyey, despite being all-mighty and running this hell, is also imprisoned within, all of the characters being his creations and his own dream-fragments. I was hoping for some outcome, even had a possible one in mind, but no - just a slow heat-death for this universe.

I'm not averse to the dream-logic books, but this one just didn't do it for me. Basically all the information about the world is presented (beautifully) in the first half, and the second half just turns around and around, without bringing many new creative images / information / anything forward.
It's not inconsistent, if the author wanted to convey the feel of a dreary eternal life and slow heat-death, he def succeeded but the second half of the book felt a bit boring to me. Also, it feels like he wanted to have 49 chapters just because multiples of 7 played a symbolic part in the book, and could have easily done with less.

Having said that, I did read this while sick, so maybe that didn't help.