THE CURE

A newly religious man in Soviet Armenia is sent to a psychiatric institution for deprogramming in this novel.

In 1982, Stephan Korsan lives in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, a satellite of the Soviet Union. His environs are bleak—he resides in a crumbling, state-constructed apartment building with his parents, considered “filthy rich” because each of the three has a bedroom. He knows there is more to life—something “magnificent” and “desirable”—but he is never inclined to think of this in spiritual terms. Then one day he bumps into Karo, a girl he once knew, and she introduces him to a different dimension of life, one that transcends the body and makes him feel part of a “Big Plan” rather than a shiftless, isolated atom. He absorbs the Hare Krishna philosophy with great enthusiasm—he quits smoking cigarettes and becomes a vegetarian, much to his mother’s bewildered consternation. She reports him to the KGB, and he is involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital, where he is physically abused, pumped with drugs, and inveigled to recant his beliefs. Kasian deftly combines a recollection of his own experiences with elements of fictional invention, painting a clear, harrowing picture of Soviet psychiatric institutions, which harshly treated all forms of political and ideological divergence and rebellion as mental illness. But the plot meanders confusingly, and the author’s prose is sometimes inclined to melodrama. While in the hospital, Stephan reflects on his fate: “Should I continue to trick these demonic doctors? This wouldn’t be a cleansing exercise then! And what kind of demons can be tricked so easily? What did the first Christians do when the wild animals were unleashed on them?” Despite its vivid insights into the brainwashing that a Soviet police state required, the story finally becomes a bit exhausting.

An illuminating but uneven tale about a victim of Soviet repression.