“A History of the Island” by Eugene Vodolazkin (translated by Lisa C. Hayden)

This is an odd novel-length parable, told as a centuries-long history about a fairytale island, often enmeshed in political strife, strange rivalries, occasional conspiracies, on-and-off-again civil wars, and, occasionally, threatened by its mainland enemies, such as France. The royal couple, Prince Parfeny and Princess Ksenia, whose commentary is interspersed within this history of the island, are three hundred and fifty years-old and have lived through every change in the island’s history, political and otherwise. Princess Ksenia remembered, “Agafon the Forward-Looking spoke reluctantly to the princes about the impending pestilence and he said nothing about their deaths. He did not like looking ahead. Strictly speaking, the very nickname “Forward-Looking” was not given to him entirely fairly. Agafon looked in all directions simultaneously…. He saw coming events with the same clarity as he saw events that had already arrived. Possibly even more clearly because the imperfections of the human memory had not distorted them. History, Agafon taught, tells much more about the present than the past.” The court historian relates, “In our land, nothing worthy of notice happened during all those years. Is that not a sign of the authorities’ wisdom? Happy are the times that do not enter the annals. Blessed is he whose rule is unmarked by historical events, for nearly all of them are born of blood and suffering.” Prince Parfeny concludes, “Our discovery seemed so beautiful to us that we had no doubt of its truthfulness since beauty and truth accompany one another.”

“Laurus” by Eugene Vodolazkin (translated by Lisa C. Hayden)

Vodolazkin is a philologist and expert in medieval Russian history, who moonlights as a novelist. This story, set predominantly in fifteenth-century rural Russia, deals with medicine, mysticism, the nature of time, and faith in an epoch of uncertainty, hunger, and plague. “The house’s masters had not survived the last pestilence. These were years when there were more houses than people.” The novel chronicles Arseny, from an orphaned boy raised by his grandfather, a village healer and prophesier, through his travels around rural Russia and, finally, on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and back. His grandfather, Christofer, mixes the old folk ways with a deep-seated conviction in Christ. “Each of us repeats Adam’s journey and acknowledges, with the loss of innocence, that he is mortal. Weep and pray, O Arseny. And do not fear death, for death is not just the bitterness of parting. It is also the joy of liberation.” After Arseny’s son and the baby’s mother die in childbirth, Arseny leaves home in penitence to begin his journey of suffering. He refuses all companionship and comforts as he wanders from village to village, using the skills he has learned to heal the sick. “You serve your memory and display boundless devotion, but know, O Arseny, that you are destroying the living in the name of the dead.” He would spend years living as a Holy Fool, living in poverty, refusing to speak but his name, while healing all who approached him. “A stranger to your own people, you endured everything with joy for the sake of Christ, searching for an ancient, perished fatherland.” As he begins to doubt the direction of his life’s path, he meets a monk in Jerusalem, “Do you not know that any journey harbors danger within itself? Any journey—and if you do not acknowledge this, then why move? So you say faith is not enough for you and you want knowledge, too. But knowledge does not involve spiritual effort. Knowledge is repose and faith is motion.” Throughout the novel, the book returns to themes of the cyclical nature of life and time. “Arseny thought back to the sorrowful events of his youth, but his thoughts were warm. These were already thoughts about someone else. He had long suspected that time was discontinuous and its individual parts were not connected to one another, much as there was no connection—other than, perhaps, a name—between the blond little boy from Rukina Quarter and the gray-haired wayfarer, almost an old man.”