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Приложение к фотоальбому
О загадке этой прозы пишут в России, в Восточной и Западной Европе, в Америке и в Китае, посвящая ей не только рецензии, но и диссертации, энциклопедические статьи. Роман "Приложение к фотоальбому" - историю дома, где обитает род "бакенбардорожденных" дядюшек, - называют "самой фантасмагорической семейной хроникой, написанной когда-либо по-русски". Головокружительное сплетение фантасмагории, мифа и реальности видят и в повести "Новочеркасск", которая увлекает в провинциальную Россию, "самую настоящую и магическую", и в повести "Двор прадеда Гриши", в центре которой пятилетний ребенок - он же повествователь и мифотворец, находящий вне добра и зла. И все же феномен этой прозы остается неразгаданным, поскольку и сама она исследует таинственные феномены - рождение, жизнь, смерть, сон, явь, - вовлекая читателя в вихревые события.
- GenresFiction
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
41 people want to read
About the author
Vladislav Otroshenko
7 books1 followerVladislav Otroshenko was born in Novocherkassk in 1959. He studied journalism and has worked as a journalist, publishing articles in many Russian and foreign publications. His books have had considerable success in Russia but he has not been published much abroad, though his novel Приложение к фотоальбому (Addendum to a Photo Album) was very well received in France.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 12, 2020
Addendum to a Photo Album is a modern absurdist comedy – it is a grotesque hybrid of postmodern and folksy fairytales.
There is a usual family album – which may also be considered as an allegory of the lost Russian Empire – but the old grey phonographs in it and nostalgia make the memory turn the ordinary past full of lechery, debauchery, drunkenness and foolishness into a flowery, frilly and fanciful legend.
It is always very pleasant to see the past as a sweet irrevocable myth.
After Uncle Semyon’s sideburns had burnt off he declared a period of mourning in the house, ordered all the mirrors be draped in black sateen, then donned a black suit with a satin collar that stank so much of mothballs, all the mosquitoes and flies in the house up and flew away.
There is a usual family album – which may also be considered as an allegory of the lost Russian Empire – but the old grey phonographs in it and nostalgia make the memory turn the ordinary past full of lechery, debauchery, drunkenness and foolishness into a flowery, frilly and fanciful legend.
It is always very pleasant to see the past as a sweet irrevocable myth.
February 24, 2025
A surreal and magical work of intricate design, where the boundaries between memory and invention blur with unsettling precision. Ostroshenko, a Russian writer whose style evokes the layered complexity of Milorad Pavić and the dark whimsy of Bulgakov, constructs a world where the past is not a fixed point but a fluid, ever-shifting entity. Otroshenko’s background in journalism and his fascination with history infuse the text with a sense of urgency, as though the act of remembering is both a duty and a danger.
The book’s structure, fragmented yet cohesive, mirrors the way recollections surface—sometimes in sharp detail, sometimes as half-formed impressions. Side whiskers, of all things, emerge as an unexpected motif, threading through the text with a peculiar persistence (even on the faces of babies!), their presence both absurd and oddly symbolic.
In one episode, a character discovers an old photograph of his great-grandfather, a man whose imposing side whiskers dominate the frame, seeming to grow thicker and more unruly with each passing year of the photo’s existence. The whiskers become a source of obsession, as the character begins to suspect they hold some hidden meaning or secret, perhaps even a coded message from the past. Another scene features a barber who refuses to trim a customer’s side whiskers, insisting they are “a historical artifact, not to be tampered with,” a subtle commentary on the sanctity of personal history. Later, a ghostly figure appears in a dream, his side whiskers dripping with rainwater, as though he has stepped out of a storm and into the sleeper’s subconscious, leaving behind a sense of unease upon wakefulness.
The tension arises from a refusal to settle into a single mode or tone. A family heirloom—a clock that ticks backward—becomes a source of both fascination and dread, its inverted mechanics suggesting that time itself is untrustworthy. Elsewhere, a seemingly innocuous photograph of a childhood home reveals hidden figures in the background, their presence unexplained but deeply unsettling. A scene in which a character encounters a doppelgänger in a foggy train station plays with the idea of identity as something malleable, even disposable. Humor emerges in unexpected places, such as a debate over whether a ghost can inherit property, a sharp critique of bureaucratic absurdity. Each word and name are chosen to evoke multiple layers of meaning, as when the author describes a river “carrying the weight of unspoken histories in its current.”
Those who find pleasure in texts that resist easy categorization will be surprised in the way the book shifts between the playful and the profound, often within the same sentence. There are moments where the density of the text feels overwhelming, especially for such a short work, though this density is also its strength.
The book’s central theme seems to be the impossibility of fully capturing the past, as though every attempt to do so only adds another layer of ambiguity. Otroshenko suggests that memory is not a record but an act of creation, constantly revised and reinterpreted. A work that feels both deeply personal and universally relevant, a meditation on how we construct and reconstruct our histories.
The book’s structure, fragmented yet cohesive, mirrors the way recollections surface—sometimes in sharp detail, sometimes as half-formed impressions. Side whiskers, of all things, emerge as an unexpected motif, threading through the text with a peculiar persistence (even on the faces of babies!), their presence both absurd and oddly symbolic.
In one episode, a character discovers an old photograph of his great-grandfather, a man whose imposing side whiskers dominate the frame, seeming to grow thicker and more unruly with each passing year of the photo’s existence. The whiskers become a source of obsession, as the character begins to suspect they hold some hidden meaning or secret, perhaps even a coded message from the past. Another scene features a barber who refuses to trim a customer’s side whiskers, insisting they are “a historical artifact, not to be tampered with,” a subtle commentary on the sanctity of personal history. Later, a ghostly figure appears in a dream, his side whiskers dripping with rainwater, as though he has stepped out of a storm and into the sleeper’s subconscious, leaving behind a sense of unease upon wakefulness.
The tension arises from a refusal to settle into a single mode or tone. A family heirloom—a clock that ticks backward—becomes a source of both fascination and dread, its inverted mechanics suggesting that time itself is untrustworthy. Elsewhere, a seemingly innocuous photograph of a childhood home reveals hidden figures in the background, their presence unexplained but deeply unsettling. A scene in which a character encounters a doppelgänger in a foggy train station plays with the idea of identity as something malleable, even disposable. Humor emerges in unexpected places, such as a debate over whether a ghost can inherit property, a sharp critique of bureaucratic absurdity. Each word and name are chosen to evoke multiple layers of meaning, as when the author describes a river “carrying the weight of unspoken histories in its current.”
Those who find pleasure in texts that resist easy categorization will be surprised in the way the book shifts between the playful and the profound, often within the same sentence. There are moments where the density of the text feels overwhelming, especially for such a short work, though this density is also its strength.
The book’s central theme seems to be the impossibility of fully capturing the past, as though every attempt to do so only adds another layer of ambiguity. Otroshenko suggests that memory is not a record but an act of creation, constantly revised and reinterpreted. A work that feels both deeply personal and universally relevant, a meditation on how we construct and reconstruct our histories.
March 10, 2015
About three pages into Vladislav Otroshenko’s surreal tragicomedy Addendum to a Photo Album I stopped and thought to myself, “Uh oh, boy am I in trouble.” I paused not because this short novel isn’t quite wonderful—it is—or because the translation is subpar—it isn’t—but rather because I quickly came to the realization that I was going to need to pay very careful attention to what was I was reading if I wanted to understand exactly what was occurring. I’m still not sure that I fully comprehended it all, but man was it an absolute joy to read.
Malach Mandrykin’s family is enormous. At my count he’s got no fewer than 13 sons (technically 12, but we’ll get to that) who are all in possession of quite splendid sideburns and are each referred to by the title of “uncle” during the course of the novel. They’re all Cossacks, and they live in a sprawlingly endless mansion somewhere in Southern Russia during the early 1900s. Malach is called upon to fight for his country during World War I and it’s while he’s away that his wife Annushka has an affair with a bombastic Greek circus owner named Antripatros. This tryst results in a pregnancy which leads to the birth of Annushka’s eleventh child, Semyon, a baby she must give up, at least temporarily, if she is to successfully hide her illicit relationship from her soon to be returning husband.
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http://www.typographicalera.com/adden...
Malach Mandrykin’s family is enormous. At my count he’s got no fewer than 13 sons (technically 12, but we’ll get to that) who are all in possession of quite splendid sideburns and are each referred to by the title of “uncle” during the course of the novel. They’re all Cossacks, and they live in a sprawlingly endless mansion somewhere in Southern Russia during the early 1900s. Malach is called upon to fight for his country during World War I and it’s while he’s away that his wife Annushka has an affair with a bombastic Greek circus owner named Antripatros. This tryst results in a pregnancy which leads to the birth of Annushka’s eleventh child, Semyon, a baby she must give up, at least temporarily, if she is to successfully hide her illicit relationship from her soon to be returning husband.
READ MORE:
http://www.typographicalera.com/adden...
May 11, 2015
One of the worst books from the sainted DAP I have read. I almost felt illiterate reading this novella—it seems there was some curious barrier constructed between my eyes, the text, and my comprehension of its content. As I ploughed through another interminable, whimsical sentence about this irritating family (who we are expected to find amusing or charming without the writer having to earn this, as if we have wandered onto the sofa of some overeager prattling auntie desperate to relay another hilarious anecdote about long-dead relatives for another three hours before your train departs), I started to have serious doubts about the future of this sainted publisher (notwithstanding the terrible proofreading in this novel—there are dozens of missing letters and fudged words, rendering some sections bemusing) in the light of their recent output. A patchwork of long-winded whimsy, of interest to fans of Cossacks as directed by Wes Anderson. (Apologies to the translator, whose introduction is sincere and kind).
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November 13, 2015This book was featured in the Nota Benes section of the November/December 2015 issue of World Literature Today Magazine.
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...
December 10, 2024
..вистински магичен реализам! Светот е една огромна куќа со безброј соби кои нѐ носат децении наназад. Книгава е идеална за разбивање на есенската монотонија со помош на хумористични елементи. Препорачувам!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews