The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin

Nota Bene Woman of the Ashes is a strong, independent piece, building a world on the verge of a cataclysmic transition. The tug-of-war between both Imani’s past and future lives is in constant flux and proves itself the catalyst for most of the novel’s action. The novel is just as concerned with cultural longevity as it is mortality, and the battle of both never strays far from the discourse itself. However, the nature of such a subject is both timeless and universal. The upheaval and assimilation of VaChopi parallels both the Syrian refugee crisis and the ongoing waves of urban decay spurred by gentrification within the US. Couto has ensured the staying power of his imminent saga with Woman of the Ashes. Though the young heroine endures a myriad of challenges, the text’s independent strength is careful not to compromise anticipation for the subsequent episode and leaves room for Imani’s growth amid a new and twisted landscape. Daniel Bokemper Oklahoma City Eugene Vodolazkin The Aviator Trans. Lisa Hayden. London. Oneworld. 2018. 387 pages. Eugene Vodolazkin’s engaging new novel opens with a mystery. The main character —Innokenty Petrovich Platonov— wakes up in a hospital ward in 1999 with no memory of who he is or how he came to be there. “Was he in an accident?” he asks. “One might say that,” the doctor answers carefully in response. Told that he must remember everything except his name and encouraged to use a journal to record the knowledge of his personal past that he recovers, Platonov begins a journey of self-discovery. Memories of the summer cottage life that defined his childhood, the death of his father, deprivation, arrests, and a terrible place of confinement in the far north return to him jumbled and out of sequence. Although he looks no more than thirty, he is, he gradually understands, as old as the century, a real Robinson Crusoe, cast ashore in a strange modern world that he does not understand and, as a result, feels fundamentally isolated from. And yet how exactly did he arrive in the post-Soviet era, transported apparently straight from the 1920s? Those familiar with twentieth-century Russian history will delight in the swirl of memories that emerge over the course of the narrative. We clearly see places and moments in time that matter profoundly in Russian cultural memory, including Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary Petrograd and the Soviet Union’s most notorious early labor camp, Solovki. Platonov’s unique, temporally fractured biography gives him a broad perspective on Russian life: just as an aviator might survey an expanse from above, his memory arcs from Ishaq Imruh Bakari Without Passport or Apology Smokestack Books Drawing on experiences of migration and African diaspora, Caribbean-born writer and filmmaker Ishaq Imruh Bakari unfolds his new book of poetry across many places, invoking figures like Marcus Garvey and Stuart Hall along the way. Bakari’s tight, multivocal verse makes frequent use of physical shape and space, the boundary-less flow of text hinting at the “new forms” that come from migration “without passport or apology.” Bessora & Barroux Alpha: Abidjan to Paris Trans. Sarah Ardizzone Bellevue Literary Press Bessora’s prose and Barroux’s illustrations join to illuminate the heartwrenching journey of a West African refugee on a quest to reunite with his family in Paris. The reader is drawn into the refugee’s experience and shares his agonizing odyssey via the graphic novel’s blunt yet poetic language. WORLDLIT.ORG 65 the early Soviet period to the end of the twentieth century. At its heart, The Aviator is a work of memory and forgetting that is about the hard work of knitting together and understanding a century in Russian history that seems in so many ways broken in its awfulness . What, the novel seems to ask us, is the connection between individual and collective memory? What matters more in our understanding of the past: major historical events or the small details of daily life such as sounds and smells that are so evocative of our personal experiences? The Aviator has been ably translated by Lisa Hayden. The novel will hold special appeal for those with

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