I feel like as a writer you can never ever correlate the experience of writing about something with the experience of enduring it, especially when it comes to atrocity. What was it like to write about such difficult subjects?Ī: I was sitting at my desk in a comfortable middle-class life in America, whereas real people did suffer these indignities. Q: There are points in the book where I had to kind of read with one eye, like closing your eyes during a violent movie. I think that being able to treat a character like a human being is something I really admire in Tolstoy’s work and tried to embody in my own. In “Hadji Murad,” he wrote about Chechens and he treated them like human beings. It struck me as peculiar that among these people whose one defining national characteristic historically has been defiance of Russia that the quintessential Russian novelist would so often pop up among their favorite writers.Ī response that I heard repeatedly was that Tolstoy treated everyone like people. When I went to Chechnya, I would ask people who their favorite author was, and Tolstoy was the answer nine times out of 10. He can write about Napoleon or he can write about a peasant in the provinces and he treats both subjects with the same seriousness and the same emotional and intellectual rigor. Q: The New York Times’ review calls your book a “21st-century ‘War and Peace.’” Was Tolstoy an influence?Ī: Tolstoy was certainly an influence. The heart of this one may be best captured in a definition Natasha finds in a physicians’ reference dictionary: “Life: a constellation of vital phenomena - organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation.Anthony Marra’s novel “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena,” which made The New York Times’ bestseller list, is based in Chechnya and follows a series of characters in an often bloody and brutal book. It is, or should be, a vehicle to share human experience. He’s done homework, mentioning in an Author’s Note sources that include memoir “The Oath: A Surgeon Under Fire,” by Khassan Baiev and “A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya,” by Anna Politkovskaya.Ī novel is no more the sum of plot points than it is a regurgitation of facts. He is, in capturing the experiences that form lives, telling what feels a very real story set in Chechnya. He’s not laying out politics, his book does not run on fear or horror. Marra is not looking to explain the inexplicable. Natasha, the golden one, may be “the only person in Volchansk who understood and envied Sonja for the wonder she was.” These snippets of reality exist in a surround that side-steps fear, emphasizing the experience of humanity that transcends the boundaries of culture and politics. The characters are given shape in life’s small moments - a cup of tea, a game of chess. When Sonja tells Akhmed that George Bush has been re-elected, he says, “I thought Ronald McDonald was president.” Or maybe that Ronald McDonald told Gorbachev to tear down the wall (“You’re thinking of Ronald Reagan,” she tells him). The work is rescued from bleakness by unexpected moments of humor. It takes a while to be able to makes sense of the chronology and the interrelationships. The focus shifts between hospital and village, and those who are tied to each place. The chapters cut back and forth between events of 1994, ’96, ’01, ’03 and ’04. The story, initially, is a challenge to follow. It traces the lives and loves of its characters, capturing the family relationships and coincidental crossings of lives that will pivotally come together in the rescue of Havaa. Though the chronology of the present covers five days in 2004, the novel ranges over a decade. Being even a competent doctor is not among his skills. He has a good heart, and is a talented portraitist. Unable to find a residency, his only experience is in his village. Akhmed skipped a year of pathology to audit art classes, graduating in the bottom 4 percent of his medical class. Havaa is a burden she is unwilling to accept, though a second doctor would be a godsend. The only reason Sonja soldiers on, performing amputations on the land-mine wounded, is to find her sister again, whether alive or dead. Natasha comes back, only to disappear again in 2003. Her only purpose is to find Natasha, her younger sister, who had disappeared a year earlier. She left medical school and returns home in 1996, shortly after the peace accord that ended the First Chechen War. The only doctor remaining at the bombed-out hospital is Sonja, who is a walking wounded lacking only external scars. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu
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