LINES OF FATE

by Mark Kharitonov ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1996

The first winner of the Russian Booker Prize is an intermittently powerful, occasionally lumbering portrayal of 20th-century Russia. When literary scholar Anton Lizavin attempts to assemble a biography of the obscure populist writer Simeon Milashevich (from the latter's scattered piecemeal jottings), he encounters a history of repression and duplicity that jolts him into an imaginary (and hallucinatory) ongoing ""conversation"" with the late subject of his researches. One thinks of Isaac Babel, but there are also echoes of Doctor Zhivago in this ambitious, well-intentioned, and, unfortunately, turgid novel. Kharitonov's principals are vivid, breathing figures, but their counterparts and antagonists, while effectively representative of a broad social and intellectual spectrum, are comparatively bloodless, and Lines of Fate overall exhibits the contrary effects of sketchiness and ponderousness.

Pub Date: April 1, 1996

ISBN: 1615571620

Page Count: 368

Publisher: New Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1996

Categories: FICTION