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Paranoia: A Novel
Immediately banned after it was published, Paranoia is a novel about how dictatorships survive by burrowing into the minds of those they rule, sowing distrust and blurring the boundaries between the state’s and the individual’s autonomy. Although Minsk and Belarus are never mentioned, they are clearly the author’s inspiration for the novel’s setting. The plot focuses on a doomed romance between a young man whose former lover has disappeared and a young woman whose other lover is the minister of state security. The novel evokes classic dissident literature while artfully depicting the post-Soviet, globalized world.
528 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
6 people are currently reading
798 people want to read
About the author
Viktar Martinowich
11 books7 followersViktar Martinowich (Belarusian: Віктар Вале́р'евіч Марціновіч, Russian: Ви́ктор Вале́рьевич Мартино́вич; born September 9, 1977) is a Belarusian writer, journalist, and art critic.
Martinowich was born in Ashmyany. In 1999 he graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Belarusian State University (BSU) and obtained a PhD from BSU in 2002 with a thesis about the Vitebsk avant-garde in Soviet newspapers in the 1920s.
From 2002 to 2015, he was a deputy editor-in-chief of the BelGazeta. On June 27, 2008, at the Vilnius Academy of Arts (Lithuania), he defended his PhD thesis on the topic "Vitebsk avant-garde (1918-1922): socio-cultural context and art criticism". He teaches at the European Humanities University.
In October–December 2014, he was engaged in research work at the Institute for the Humanities in Vienna where, within the framework of the Milena Jesenská Fellowship for Journalists, he prepared a work about the Vitebsk period of Marc Chagall.
His first fiction book was published in 2009. Later his books received attention and received awards from Belarusian and Russian literature societies.
A film based on the book Vozera radasti (Lake of Happiness) was made in 2019.
In 2021, during the 2020-2021 Belarusian protests, 558 copies of his last book, Revolution, were confiscated. At the same time, Belarusian customs forbad mailing the book to any other country.
Martinowich was born in Ashmyany. In 1999 he graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Belarusian State University (BSU) and obtained a PhD from BSU in 2002 with a thesis about the Vitebsk avant-garde in Soviet newspapers in the 1920s.
From 2002 to 2015, he was a deputy editor-in-chief of the BelGazeta. On June 27, 2008, at the Vilnius Academy of Arts (Lithuania), he defended his PhD thesis on the topic "Vitebsk avant-garde (1918-1922): socio-cultural context and art criticism". He teaches at the European Humanities University.
In October–December 2014, he was engaged in research work at the Institute for the Humanities in Vienna where, within the framework of the Milena Jesenská Fellowship for Journalists, he prepared a work about the Vitebsk period of Marc Chagall.
His first fiction book was published in 2009. Later his books received attention and received awards from Belarusian and Russian literature societies.
A film based on the book Vozera radasti (Lake of Happiness) was made in 2019.
In 2021, during the 2020-2021 Belarusian protests, 558 copies of his last book, Revolution, were confiscated. At the same time, Belarusian customs forbad mailing the book to any other country.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
February 24, 2017
Corporate Living
Oh, the challenge of being a Yuppie in Stalinesque Belarus: cell phones, and Marks & Spencer's, and macchiato and Lexus four-wheel drives; dominated by the KGB (MGB in Paranoia), dodgy electric circuits and Soviet-era quality architecture. It's like American Psycho but with the protagonist living in a two-room walk-up in the South Bronx. A certain tension is to be expected.
This is a land in which quasi-bohemian writers (of whom Anatoly Nevinsky, protagonist) and internet nerds confront the state security services. These are residents of the ultimate corporate, only lately Communist, state, which provides cradle to grave stability (repression), recognition (surveillance) and attentive care (harassment) for those who behave themselves (or don’t). Providing short-term, on-demand contract employment (no minimal hours) with the promise of the possibility of unlimited consumption of white goods, and cafe culture a la Casablanca 1942. A sort of pre-post-modernist idyll. Romania in 1988.
Much has been modernised since the clumsiness of the old Soviet republic. Even the KGB functions by creating a controlled advertising image rather than allowing the public to invent their possibly calumnious versions of the protectors of national morals. No more goons in leather coats. Just the laconic corporate slogan: "We see, we hear, we know" expressing the delicate combination of sensitivity and power in the central institution of Belarusian society. Google run by Trump.
"What's distinctive about the present epoch is that nowadays anti-utopias can be based entirely on factual material", says one of Martinovitch's characters. 1984 and Animal Farm had to be written by Orwell as impressionistic fantasies because documented facts about the Stalinist system were unavailable. But Martinovich paints from reality, in tones of concrete grey, a brutalist literature, therefore, with colourful splashes of BMW's and Audi A8's. Nothing needs to be hidden here. The game is played in the open. This is the definition of a free society, no?
It would be a mistake to consider Paranoia as merely an existential take on young adult life in present-day Belarus. It is that certainly. But the extremes Martinovich burlesques are facts of contemporary international, not just Belarusian, culture. Anatoly's daily life isn't much different from that of his peers in Europe or North America. Yes, clandestine sex is easier in New York City than in Minsk, but probably just as difficult for a struggling writer with limited resources in, say, Tokyo, and certainly in Jeddah. Like almost every young man of moderate education and minimal awareness, Anatoly tries to get on in a world he didn't make, falls in love with the wrong person, and doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut around authority figures. Anatoly could easily fit into Rupert Dreyfus's 2014 novel Spark, whose protagonist is a similar 'snowflake' who wanders into a collision with the British security services.
Do the maths: Take an Anthony not an Anatoly, let's say from Brooklyn rather than Minsk. Anthony-from-Brooklyn has no more job-choice than Anatoly-from-Minsk; he can work for City Bank or the government, the two biggest employers in New York City. And working for either one will throw Anthony-from-Brooklyn into the great panopticon of investigative vetting which will follow him the rest of his days. He will be continuously evaluated as to his team spirit, his ideological suitability, as he moves, perhaps, back and forth between the two employers (During my time in the military, something called 'adaptability polls' were used to assess just this; one's peers and superiors periodically forced ranked everyone in the cadre according to attitudinal traits considered relevant to loyal service; the results were used to determine promotion and references).
So Anthony-from-Brooklyn's career is then established. The paper-trail on which his reputation is recorded in corporate offices, and upon which his livelihood, his pension, and a large part of his identity hangs is who he is, his corporate identity. The fact that Anatoly’s equivalent records in Minsk are all in one place in the KGB archives hardly matters in the age of internet data-sharing. And if Anthony-from-Brooklyn happens to be Black, or Islamic, or just a mouthy white boy, he's just as likely to spend some time on Riker's Island as Anatoly is in KGB HQ detention cells. Anatoly and Anthony share much more than we might be willing to admit. For a start neither one is Republican.
What Martinovich describes are the essential features of life in the modern corporate world no matter what language is spoken or national political history. The corporation not the state rules. Constant vigilance over personnel and archival maintenance are essential to the smooth running of corporate interactions. The traditional concerns of bureaucracy are combined in this world with the tensions of security, both commercial and political. The result is a sort of permanent condition of high terror-alert, which of course is in itself terror. Neither torture nor physical threats are necessary to keep the peace. Instruments of control have been internalised: the fear of failure, of redundancy, of technological obsolescence, of inadequacy of either skills or, even more crucially, of will to succeed. Aspire or die. Dropping-out is a theoretical possibility but practically destructive to health and satisfying family life.
Belarus sounds like a horrid place to live. But not because of fear of imminent arrest, imprisonment, and exile. Belarus after all doesn't have a Siberian Gulag and has fewer incarcerations per head of population than the United States (554 vs. 715 per 100,000). The techniques of assuring political conformance are a bit subtler than in the old days. It's enough now to be able to wreck a career and make life an administrative nightmare among a relatively well-educated urbanised population. If you don't think the FBI and CIA write and store surveillance reports at a level of equivalent banality and triviality as those by the KGB in Paranoia, wake up and smell the ether (See that well known radical publication, The Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014...
578641993388259674).
No need any longer to prevent access to foreign luxuries in Belarus or anywhere else. Just make sure the right people, those who 'contribute', get them. And do keep the process through which contribution is defined a bit vague inside the corporate leadership of the KGB...and Citibank of course. Young people of the snowflake generation are so much easier to indoctrinate than the bourgeoisie ever were. Their feeling of entitlement is easier to exploit. Let the dissatisfied ones emigrate if they dare. Life out West isn't easy. And when they find out they need references, they'll be back. If not, there are others here who know how we work. Belarus is evidence that totalitarianism can absorb consumerist culture more smoothly than the reverse. It's the corporate way.
Having come of age during the Vietnam War and intense American nationalistic paranoia, I don't detect much difference between Anatoly's crime of "defamation of the Motherland" and the tag of "unpatriotic slacker, coward" I heard hurled at a friend who very sensibly headed North of 44 degrees 40 minutes in 1967. He, like a character in Anatoly's book, was dismissed from university for brash impoliteness to a professor with the sure and certain knowledge that he would be drafted and on his way to Cam Ranh Bay within months. La meme chose as far as I can see.
Conformity achieved through corporate incentive is far more effective than physical threat. Paranoia begins with an inversion of the biblical story of creation, "There was light, and then came darkness." The darkness he is referring to seems to be precisely the incentives that are the reality of everyone in Martinovich's Belarus. But not only there. We all suffer at least a bit from the same nagging suspicion that someone's out to get us. If not Vladimir, then Donald. So we play along. That, too, is the corporate way.
Oh, the challenge of being a Yuppie in Stalinesque Belarus: cell phones, and Marks & Spencer's, and macchiato and Lexus four-wheel drives; dominated by the KGB (MGB in Paranoia), dodgy electric circuits and Soviet-era quality architecture. It's like American Psycho but with the protagonist living in a two-room walk-up in the South Bronx. A certain tension is to be expected.
This is a land in which quasi-bohemian writers (of whom Anatoly Nevinsky, protagonist) and internet nerds confront the state security services. These are residents of the ultimate corporate, only lately Communist, state, which provides cradle to grave stability (repression), recognition (surveillance) and attentive care (harassment) for those who behave themselves (or don’t). Providing short-term, on-demand contract employment (no minimal hours) with the promise of the possibility of unlimited consumption of white goods, and cafe culture a la Casablanca 1942. A sort of pre-post-modernist idyll. Romania in 1988.
Much has been modernised since the clumsiness of the old Soviet republic. Even the KGB functions by creating a controlled advertising image rather than allowing the public to invent their possibly calumnious versions of the protectors of national morals. No more goons in leather coats. Just the laconic corporate slogan: "We see, we hear, we know" expressing the delicate combination of sensitivity and power in the central institution of Belarusian society. Google run by Trump.
"What's distinctive about the present epoch is that nowadays anti-utopias can be based entirely on factual material", says one of Martinovitch's characters. 1984 and Animal Farm had to be written by Orwell as impressionistic fantasies because documented facts about the Stalinist system were unavailable. But Martinovich paints from reality, in tones of concrete grey, a brutalist literature, therefore, with colourful splashes of BMW's and Audi A8's. Nothing needs to be hidden here. The game is played in the open. This is the definition of a free society, no?
It would be a mistake to consider Paranoia as merely an existential take on young adult life in present-day Belarus. It is that certainly. But the extremes Martinovich burlesques are facts of contemporary international, not just Belarusian, culture. Anatoly's daily life isn't much different from that of his peers in Europe or North America. Yes, clandestine sex is easier in New York City than in Minsk, but probably just as difficult for a struggling writer with limited resources in, say, Tokyo, and certainly in Jeddah. Like almost every young man of moderate education and minimal awareness, Anatoly tries to get on in a world he didn't make, falls in love with the wrong person, and doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut around authority figures. Anatoly could easily fit into Rupert Dreyfus's 2014 novel Spark, whose protagonist is a similar 'snowflake' who wanders into a collision with the British security services.
Do the maths: Take an Anthony not an Anatoly, let's say from Brooklyn rather than Minsk. Anthony-from-Brooklyn has no more job-choice than Anatoly-from-Minsk; he can work for City Bank or the government, the two biggest employers in New York City. And working for either one will throw Anthony-from-Brooklyn into the great panopticon of investigative vetting which will follow him the rest of his days. He will be continuously evaluated as to his team spirit, his ideological suitability, as he moves, perhaps, back and forth between the two employers (During my time in the military, something called 'adaptability polls' were used to assess just this; one's peers and superiors periodically forced ranked everyone in the cadre according to attitudinal traits considered relevant to loyal service; the results were used to determine promotion and references).
So Anthony-from-Brooklyn's career is then established. The paper-trail on which his reputation is recorded in corporate offices, and upon which his livelihood, his pension, and a large part of his identity hangs is who he is, his corporate identity. The fact that Anatoly’s equivalent records in Minsk are all in one place in the KGB archives hardly matters in the age of internet data-sharing. And if Anthony-from-Brooklyn happens to be Black, or Islamic, or just a mouthy white boy, he's just as likely to spend some time on Riker's Island as Anatoly is in KGB HQ detention cells. Anatoly and Anthony share much more than we might be willing to admit. For a start neither one is Republican.
What Martinovich describes are the essential features of life in the modern corporate world no matter what language is spoken or national political history. The corporation not the state rules. Constant vigilance over personnel and archival maintenance are essential to the smooth running of corporate interactions. The traditional concerns of bureaucracy are combined in this world with the tensions of security, both commercial and political. The result is a sort of permanent condition of high terror-alert, which of course is in itself terror. Neither torture nor physical threats are necessary to keep the peace. Instruments of control have been internalised: the fear of failure, of redundancy, of technological obsolescence, of inadequacy of either skills or, even more crucially, of will to succeed. Aspire or die. Dropping-out is a theoretical possibility but practically destructive to health and satisfying family life.
Belarus sounds like a horrid place to live. But not because of fear of imminent arrest, imprisonment, and exile. Belarus after all doesn't have a Siberian Gulag and has fewer incarcerations per head of population than the United States (554 vs. 715 per 100,000). The techniques of assuring political conformance are a bit subtler than in the old days. It's enough now to be able to wreck a career and make life an administrative nightmare among a relatively well-educated urbanised population. If you don't think the FBI and CIA write and store surveillance reports at a level of equivalent banality and triviality as those by the KGB in Paranoia, wake up and smell the ether (See that well known radical publication, The Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014...
578641993388259674).
No need any longer to prevent access to foreign luxuries in Belarus or anywhere else. Just make sure the right people, those who 'contribute', get them. And do keep the process through which contribution is defined a bit vague inside the corporate leadership of the KGB...and Citibank of course. Young people of the snowflake generation are so much easier to indoctrinate than the bourgeoisie ever were. Their feeling of entitlement is easier to exploit. Let the dissatisfied ones emigrate if they dare. Life out West isn't easy. And when they find out they need references, they'll be back. If not, there are others here who know how we work. Belarus is evidence that totalitarianism can absorb consumerist culture more smoothly than the reverse. It's the corporate way.
Having come of age during the Vietnam War and intense American nationalistic paranoia, I don't detect much difference between Anatoly's crime of "defamation of the Motherland" and the tag of "unpatriotic slacker, coward" I heard hurled at a friend who very sensibly headed North of 44 degrees 40 minutes in 1967. He, like a character in Anatoly's book, was dismissed from university for brash impoliteness to a professor with the sure and certain knowledge that he would be drafted and on his way to Cam Ranh Bay within months. La meme chose as far as I can see.
Conformity achieved through corporate incentive is far more effective than physical threat. Paranoia begins with an inversion of the biblical story of creation, "There was light, and then came darkness." The darkness he is referring to seems to be precisely the incentives that are the reality of everyone in Martinovich's Belarus. But not only there. We all suffer at least a bit from the same nagging suspicion that someone's out to get us. If not Vladimir, then Donald. So we play along. That, too, is the corporate way.
April 23, 2023
Att författaren är från Minsk och skrev den på mobilen av rädsla är tufft och ger så klart extra tyngd, men det är en ganska förutsägbar historia och ett språk som är lite jobbigt. Obs att betyget är en del i den nya lite hårdare betygsättningen.
January 3, 2014
Dystopias often trouble people. After all, they are quite often somehow linked to the world or even the society one lives in. If they weren't, a reader would have very little to attach themselves emotionally. However, that being said, people are also very voyeuristic; probably most people just want to read dystopias as things that might happen to other people or has already happened. As a consequence, it is easy to see why this novel written about Belarus became such a big hit in Russia and why it has hit potential elsewhere as well.
As countless vampire books (loath to call them novels)and others have testified, for a book to become a hit they do not need to be well-written. Unfortunately, Paranoia is not a masterpiece in the art of novels. In fact, it is almost a hacky novel. From the prose, the events and way they are structured all things seem unrealistic or hard to believe. While novels with a cause often choose effectiveness over precision, Paranoia often falls short on both. You could see the overtness of stylistics as meant to emphasize, but the way Martinovits does this leaves no room for finesse. This is a work of an overconfident writer who should have been reigned by a talented and honest editor for years before this novel would have been good enough as a text to publish. It is of an interesting topic, but painful to read most of the time.
As countless vampire books (loath to call them novels)and others have testified, for a book to become a hit they do not need to be well-written. Unfortunately, Paranoia is not a masterpiece in the art of novels. In fact, it is almost a hacky novel. From the prose, the events and way they are structured all things seem unrealistic or hard to believe. While novels with a cause often choose effectiveness over precision, Paranoia often falls short on both. You could see the overtness of stylistics as meant to emphasize, but the way Martinovits does this leaves no room for finesse. This is a work of an overconfident writer who should have been reigned by a talented and honest editor for years before this novel would have been good enough as a text to publish. It is of an interesting topic, but painful to read most of the time.
April 30, 2025
«Специфика нашего века заключается в том, что антиутопии могут писаться на совершенно реальном материале».
В 2010, возможно, было бы сложно поверить, что такие антиутопии пишутся на основе реальности. В 2025 таких сомнений уже не возникает.
Книга понравилась. Не понравился главный герой и все его рассуждения. Мне было странно и даже неловко от того, что будучи писателем, которого практически преследуют в стране, он все-таки оставался наивным и местами романтизирующим все происходящее вокруг.
В 2010, возможно, было бы сложно поверить, что такие антиутопии пишутся на основе реальности. В 2025 таких сомнений уже не возникает.
Книга понравилась. Не понравился главный герой и все его рассуждения. Мне было странно и даже неловко от того, что будучи писателем, которого практически преследуют в стране, он все-таки оставался наивным и местами романтизирующим все происходящее вокруг.
May 26, 2016
First third made me think I was reading a love story, second third was like being thrown into the Belorussian version of 'The Lives of Others', the last third left me with a "what the hell did I just read" feeling. Once I got into the story I read it very fast, especially the second part was easy to read through. The beginning has a lot of optimism but you can see it disappear the further you get into the story and at some point you can just tell it's not going to end well. The ending was a surprise, at least for me. I'm still not sure if it's what truly happened or if it was an elaborate setup and brainwashing or what it is that actually happened in the end. I like the fact that this is a story about love and jealousy but also a story about a surveillance state and what it's like when you can't be sure of anything. The author's writing style will probably throw off some people, especially in the beginning because at times it's a bit difficult to follow. Personally I didn't have a problem with it, but that's mostly because it's close to my own writing style. I think the biggest problem I had was that I couldn't relate to any of the characters. It would've been so great to know more about Liza and Muravjov, their motives and their lives in general. Now they were defined through Anatoli and you can't be sure you actually got to know anything about them at all. A very interesting read anyway, and probably not as much sci-fi or dystopia as people would like to think.
April 27, 2013
This book has been banned in Belarus, which of course means everyone now wants to read it. The author suggests that it is not the quality of his prose, especially in translation, which attracts readers, but because they want to know about life in the last dictatorship in Europe.
His prose is worth reading.
The book is well written.
He is not giving us a documentary of life in Belarus; he is giving us an impression of life in a fictional dictatorship which resembles Belarus. His main character, Anatoly, shies away from too close an examination of the reality of his country's regime, while also being fascinated by it. Elizaveta says he and Muraviov are the same. The unreality of the situation gives a powerful impression of what that life must be like. Anatoly can escape it only in his imagination.
The original Muraviov repressed nationalism and liberalisation in the name of the tsar. The fictional Muraviov accumulates personal wealth and uses the apparatus of state repression in a similar way. After a time when the USSR had supported liberalisation (under Gorbachov) and while Russia supported nationalism (under Yeltsin) the original (and still current) president of Belarus (Lukashenko) staged a military coup, imposed state repression and opposed nationalism, supported by Yeltsin.
His prose is worth reading.
The book is well written.
He is not giving us a documentary of life in Belarus; he is giving us an impression of life in a fictional dictatorship which resembles Belarus. His main character, Anatoly, shies away from too close an examination of the reality of his country's regime, while also being fascinated by it. Elizaveta says he and Muraviov are the same. The unreality of the situation gives a powerful impression of what that life must be like. Anatoly can escape it only in his imagination.
The original Muraviov repressed nationalism and liberalisation in the name of the tsar. The fictional Muraviov accumulates personal wealth and uses the apparatus of state repression in a similar way. After a time when the USSR had supported liberalisation (under Gorbachov) and while Russia supported nationalism (under Yeltsin) the original (and still current) president of Belarus (Lukashenko) staged a military coup, imposed state repression and opposed nationalism, supported by Yeltsin.
August 21, 2017
Paranoia on mielenkiintoinen teos! Alussa oli jonkin aikaa vahva "mitähän sitä taas tulikaan lainattua" -tyyppinen fiilis, mutta melko pian juoni selkeni ja kaappaasi minut mukaansa.
Valko-Venäläinen kirjailija, Anatoli, törmää kahvilassa kauniiseen ja hyvin rikkaaksi osoittautuvaan Elizavetaan, ihastuu tähän ja pian pari on rakastunut toisiinsa. Sitten selviää, että Elizavetan upeat autot ja talot ovatkin peräisin maan diktaattorilta, Nikolai Muravjovilta. Pari hankkii itselleen vaatimattoman salaisen lemmenpesän. Mutta kuinka salainen se onkaan? Maassa, jossa jokaisen toisinajattelijan jokaista hetkeä kuunnellaan, seurataan ja heidän jätteensäkin tongitaan ei ole helppo piiloutua. Ennen pitkää jokaista tullaan hakemaan pahamaineiseen keskusteluun tai kuulusteluun.
Hienosti rakennettu tarina, jossa Anatolin paranoiat kasvavat sivujen huvetessa. Kerronta poikkeaa tavallisesta ja loppukin on oikeastaan erinomainen. Paikoitellen hieman puuduttavaa luettavaa johtuen pitkistä kappaleista ja Anatolin ajatuksenjuoksun kuvailusta, mutta ehdottomasti lukemisen arvoinen opus.
Valko-Venäläinen kirjailija, Anatoli, törmää kahvilassa kauniiseen ja hyvin rikkaaksi osoittautuvaan Elizavetaan, ihastuu tähän ja pian pari on rakastunut toisiinsa. Sitten selviää, että Elizavetan upeat autot ja talot ovatkin peräisin maan diktaattorilta, Nikolai Muravjovilta. Pari hankkii itselleen vaatimattoman salaisen lemmenpesän. Mutta kuinka salainen se onkaan? Maassa, jossa jokaisen toisinajattelijan jokaista hetkeä kuunnellaan, seurataan ja heidän jätteensäkin tongitaan ei ole helppo piiloutua. Ennen pitkää jokaista tullaan hakemaan pahamaineiseen keskusteluun tai kuulusteluun.
Hienosti rakennettu tarina, jossa Anatolin paranoiat kasvavat sivujen huvetessa. Kerronta poikkeaa tavallisesta ja loppukin on oikeastaan erinomainen. Paikoitellen hieman puuduttavaa luettavaa johtuen pitkistä kappaleista ja Anatolin ajatuksenjuoksun kuvailusta, mutta ehdottomasti lukemisen arvoinen opus.
March 2, 2011
Моя оценка **** в данном случае отражает не литературные достоинства самого произведения, а ее актуальность и даже провидчество, не говоря уже о мужестве автора (даже если и не без расчета). Это было написано задолго до того, как кандидаты в президенты подверглись избиениям и были брошены в тюрьму КГБ во время декабрьских "выборов" 2010-го года - кто бы мог такое предположить даже утром того же дня?!
Что мне не понравилось - это герои, которые говорят "как по писаному", и настолько одинаково, что и не разберешь, кто из них это сказал, или подумал. Но еще больше мне не понравился утонченный облик министра МГБ - это безмерно далеко от его реального прототипа.
Что мне не понравилось - это герои, которые говорят "как по писаному", и настолько одинаково, что и не разберешь, кто из них это сказал, или подумал. Но еще больше мне не понравился утонченный облик министра МГБ - это безмерно далеко от его реального прототипа.
February 6, 2011
2.5 stars. Paranoia is a disappointing love story of a novel about a couple -- well, a triangle -- living in Belarus. Martinovich calls the book a "reality antiutopia," which isn't far off thanks to lots of descriptions of surveillance and its consequences. I was very interested in the book because I've visited Belarus several times but Paranoia is weighted down by cultural and literary references that make it feel derivative.
(There's lots more on my blog, here.)
(There's lots more on my blog, here.)
November 14, 2016
The novel is an engaging exploration of life in a security state. It's an excellent translation, and the prose is compelling. The ending is lacking, however, not only because it begins to drag, but also because it leaves fully open a key questions: Who is Lisa? (A question that does not occur to Snyder in the Introduction.) Perhaps this is intentional from the author; but, I finished the book feeling disappointed that this character, who had seemed so complex, was really an enigma who only mattered inasmuch as Anatoly imagined her to matter to him or to Muraviov.
November 1, 2013
A paranoid love triangle in a country somewhat similar to Belarus. Interesting, with the different approaches the book takes, but also somewhat long-winding. It was a bit of a struggle to read.
August 13, 2024
I really wanted to like this novel, but it is a massive chore to get through. Unlike a few of the countries I've been through in this endeavor of reading one book from each one, I have been paying some attention to Belarus since seeing a play by the Belarus Free Theater group in London in 2022. The idea of a novel set in a fictional (but exactly like Belarus) country ruled by a dictator sounded like it would be full of insights, but alas a good setting alone does not a good book make.
This novel is divided in three more or less equally sized chapters. In the first one, things happen so quickly, I had literary vertigo. Two young people fall in love apparently simply from looking at each other once, and after meeting twice, they are renting a flat together. The second chapter, however, goes the polar opposite way, and, while containing a somewhat refreshing style, seeing as it's written entirely as surveillance reports on the couple, it has zero substance. We read about 90 pages of the couple meeting, having sex, dissecting the sex they just had, talking mundanely about their love and very rarely about the predicament of clandestine relationships in an oppressive country, rise, repeat.
The main problem for me is how utterly unremarkable the two characters are. Anatoly is a mildly disruptive writer, so inconsequential he never caught the attention of a government that kidnaps and silences its critics, and Elisaveta's only characteristic is apparently being irresistible, since all who come in contact with her become instantly obsessed. She also cannot see a difference between a dictator who has people killed and keeps an entire country in a chokehold and a civilian who has never, you know, murdered anyone. She thinks the former is as worthy of love and affection and sympathy as anyone because he plays the piano really well. The pace in this second chapter is an absolute slog and it's incredibly laborious to get through. At one point, when a bombastic and life changing revelation is made by the woman, and Anatoly is spiralling and struggling to cope with it, she says 'It seems to me that it would be easier for us to have this conversation if there were leaves in the streets'. What?
Finally, the third chapter is the least uneventful of the three, but by then, my fatigue of this story had permanently compromised my ability to stay invested. I don't regret reading this, but had there not been a motivation to read a book from Belarus, I wouldn't have found any other reason to finish it.
This novel is divided in three more or less equally sized chapters. In the first one, things happen so quickly, I had literary vertigo. Two young people fall in love apparently simply from looking at each other once, and after meeting twice, they are renting a flat together. The second chapter, however, goes the polar opposite way, and, while containing a somewhat refreshing style, seeing as it's written entirely as surveillance reports on the couple, it has zero substance. We read about 90 pages of the couple meeting, having sex, dissecting the sex they just had, talking mundanely about their love and very rarely about the predicament of clandestine relationships in an oppressive country, rise, repeat.
The main problem for me is how utterly unremarkable the two characters are. Anatoly is a mildly disruptive writer, so inconsequential he never caught the attention of a government that kidnaps and silences its critics, and Elisaveta's only characteristic is apparently being irresistible, since all who come in contact with her become instantly obsessed. She also cannot see a difference between a dictator who has people killed and keeps an entire country in a chokehold and a civilian who has never, you know, murdered anyone. She thinks the former is as worthy of love and affection and sympathy as anyone because he plays the piano really well. The pace in this second chapter is an absolute slog and it's incredibly laborious to get through. At one point, when a bombastic and life changing revelation is made by the woman, and Anatoly is spiralling and struggling to cope with it, she says 'It seems to me that it would be easier for us to have this conversation if there were leaves in the streets'. What?
Finally, the third chapter is the least uneventful of the three, but by then, my fatigue of this story had permanently compromised my ability to stay invested. I don't regret reading this, but had there not been a motivation to read a book from Belarus, I wouldn't have found any other reason to finish it.
February 26, 2025
Dictatorships affect all aspects of life. In Paranoia, the love affair between Anatoly and Elisaveta is complicated by her role as mistress to the head of the Secret Police. The relationship looks more like the focus of 1984 but was also a bit too real. The ending of the book was chilling as it should be. Hopefully, our reality will not become like this.
June 8, 2025
I suspect this suffers in translation, but the 7 full pages of translator's notes should have been a clue to what a slog this was going to be. The final third was quite gripping (and rather stomach-churning) though.
December 3, 2020
Kirjassa oli ihan hyviäkin kohtia, mutta alkuun oli tosi vaikea päästä.
June 30, 2021
I really liked the first half, but the second half became confusing and I lost the story.
February 16, 2017
Difficult to follow, (very) long-winded. Certainly how a dystopian novel should be, but the droning killed it.
July 10, 2016
Спачатку кніга вельмі зацягнула, чытаў і не мог адарвацца: вельмі лёгка было ўяўляць месцы падзей, бо гэта твой родны горад, і ты сам не аднойчы хадзіў па гэтых вуліцах. Але пад канец стала сумна і нецікава, а канцоўка дык зусім пакінула шмат пытанняў, прычым не такіх, над якімі хочацца падумаць, а на якіх няма адказу. Імхо, аўтар надта ўсё ўдаскладніў і не расказаў (але я не выклячаю магчымась, што я проста не зразумеў) галоўнай інтрыгі другой паловы кнігі - а што ж усё такі здарылася з Лізай?
September 4, 2017
Der Schreibstil von V.N. gefällt mir sehr gut. Er zeichnet schöne, lebendige Bilder mit seinen Beschreibungen und hat Humor. Leider reichte das nicht aus, um die geschilderte Liebesgeschichte weniger langatmig zu machen. Dieser Teil des Buches hätte weniger Platz bekommen sollen. Ansonsten wird die politische Lage so geschildert, dass der Leser die Beklemmung der Bevölkerung spüren kann.
May 1, 2021
Einfach nur nein.... Ich lese wirklich viel und gerne. Aber dieses Buch hat mir absolut nicht gefallen, so daß ich es abgebrochen habe.
Die Personen sind mir unsympathisch. Der Schreibstil wechselt zwischenzeitlich in einen Theater Schreibstil da es Abhörprotokolle sein sollen. Für mich war es leider eine absolut Zeitverschwendung. Schade
Die Personen sind mir unsympathisch. Der Schreibstil wechselt zwischenzeitlich in einen Theater Schreibstil da es Abhörprotokolle sein sollen. Für mich war es leider eine absolut Zeitverschwendung. Schade
February 27, 2018
Epätasainen lukukokemus. Parhaimmillaan kirja imaisi mukaansa tajunnanvirtaan, välillä taas etenin silmäilemällä seuraavaa juonikohtaa etsien. Ensimmäinen ajatus tarinan päätyttyä: Olipa surullinen kirja.
Kirjassa kerrotaan valkovenäläisen toisinajattelijakirjailijan tuhosta. Mukana pyörii hänen rakastettunsa, mutta tämän sielunelämään emme juurikaan tutustu. Neuvostoajan kohtaloista ja KGB:n / edeltäjiensä menetelmistä lukeneille loppua kohti kovin tutun kuuloista.
Rakenne on veikeä: kirja jakaantuu kolmeen osaan, joista keskimmäinen koostuu salakuuntelumateriaalista.
Kaiken kaikkiaan hyvin ristiriitainen tunnelma nyt, kun koetan tätä tähdillä arvottaa. Voisi olla kahden mutta toisaalta myös kolmen tähden kirja. Ei se tavallisin toteutus ainakaan.
Kirjassa kerrotaan valkovenäläisen toisinajattelijakirjailijan tuhosta. Mukana pyörii hänen rakastettunsa, mutta tämän sielunelämään emme juurikaan tutustu. Neuvostoajan kohtaloista ja KGB:n / edeltäjiensä menetelmistä lukeneille loppua kohti kovin tutun kuuloista.
Rakenne on veikeä: kirja jakaantuu kolmeen osaan, joista keskimmäinen koostuu salakuuntelumateriaalista.
Kaiken kaikkiaan hyvin ristiriitainen tunnelma nyt, kun koetan tätä tähdillä arvottaa. Voisi olla kahden mutta toisaalta myös kolmen tähden kirja. Ei se tavallisin toteutus ainakaan.
Want to read
September 9, 2018Belarus
Read
April 1, 2019somewhat unreadable but reading - possible
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