Near zero
Near Zero ( Russian Околоноля ) is the title of a novel published in June 2009 under the pseudonym Natan Dubowizki in Russia, the author of which is considered to be the Russian politician Vladislav Surkov . Surkov was Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian government until May 2013 and was then personal advisor to President Vladimir Putin until February 18, 2020 . The pseudonym Dubowizki, which is said to allude to the name of his second wife Natalja Dubowizkaja , led to Surkov , and the Russian writer Viktor Erofeev confirmed that Surkov was the author of the book. Overall, the book paints a gloomy picture of post-communist Russia and describes its grievances.
Creation and publication
At the end of June 2009 appeared in Russia under the pseudonym Natan Dubowizki ( Russian Натан Дубовицкий ) a novel entitled Near Zero ( Russian Околоноля ). The literary qualities were judged by most of the critics to be considerable; both the composition and the style of the text would betray an experienced author. Film director Nikita Michalkow even compared the novel with Mikhail Bulgakov's classic The Master and Margarita . The unknown author fulfills the genre claim “gangsta fiction” raised in the subtitle on the 112 pages through the extensive use of gutter and gangster slang.
The Russian press soon began to speculate about the authorship of the Russki Pioner novel. Many traces led to Wladislaw Surkow , the then deputy head of the Russian presidential administration . An important indicator of Surkov's authorship was considered to be that the pseudonym used alludes to the name of his second wife Natalja Dubrowitzkaja. The renowned Russian daily Vedomosti revealed that shortly after the book was published, Surkov wrote an article on art history in Russki Pioner's magazine and in June about an unfinished novel in the same magazine. On September 14, 2009, the British newspaper The Independent also published a story of disclosure in which an employee of Russki Pioner confirmed the authorship of Surkov.
At the end of September 2009 Surkov himself published a critical review of the novel, in which he interpreted Near Zero as a liberation from a literary postmodernism that had become illegible. The hero is "a very bad person who would like to get better, but cannot and therefore suffers". The author has nothing to say, so he's just messing around. In the near future, the novel Near Zero will be recognized for what it really is - nothing. Against the background of Surkov's goal of reshaping Russian realities, his negative self-review takes on a political-technological sense: if Russian society can overcome the grievances described in Near Zero , the novel is superfluous.
On November 11, the Russian writer Viktor Erofeev stated in an interview with Literaturnaja Gaseta that Vladislav Surkov had written this “remarkable novel”. He owns a copy of Near Zero, personally signed by him . On December 29th, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published another article by Viktor Erofejew with the same summary: “The third man in the state, the forty-six year old Wladislaw Surkov, who is responsible for all domestic politics in our country, has a novel about life today Russia wrote. ”Surkov himself has not yet confirmed his authorship.
content
The main character of the novel is Yegor Samochodov , who earned his living in Russia in the early 1990s with copyright piracy, exploitation of undeclared editions and as a ghostwriter for politicians. He lives divorced from his wife and is also unable to love his own daughter. Samochodow is accepted into the mafia fraternity of the "Black Book", but has to commit a murder as a condition of admission, which he carries out without blinking an eyelid.
The novel paints a gloomy picture of post-communist Russia and relentlessly enumerates its grievances: “Bribery, kickbacks, contract killings, protection organizations, state investments in wives, brothers-in-law and nieces; leasing organs of power to respectable rascals and upstart relationships; trading in offices, medals, decorations, titles; Control over succession; commercial law, lucrative patriotism. "
His sex partner Plaksa ( Russian Плакса ) distinguishes Samochodow “from a rubber doll only in that it is not made of rubber”. She stands in front of the camera as an actress in the "south" of Russia (which can be identified as the Caucasus region) and is raped and murdered so realistically on the screen that Samokhodov suspects a crime. In the “South” he seeks and finds the brutal director who is characterized as the epitome of the total demoralization of Russian society.
The novel ends in an unexpected volte: it is possible that what happened is just a horror vision of the protagonist, who only committed his crimes in his sleep. Again and again, Vladimir Nabokov's later novel Transparent Things (1972) appears as an aesthetic model , in which the boundaries between fiction and reality are deliberately blurred.
Translations and film adaptations
Nearly Zero has been published in German by Berlin Verlag . The director Kirill Serebrennikow would like to bring a theatrical staging of the novel on stage in 2010.
literature
- Natan Dubowizki: Околоноля , Media Group LIVE publishing house, Moscow 2009. ISBN 978-5-904511-01-2 . (Russian original edition)
- Natan Dubowizki: Near Zero , Berlin: Berlin Verlag 2010. ISBN 978-3-827009-47-0 .
Web links
- Moscow's Mysteries: Corruption is Half the Order Review by Jens Mühling , Tagesspiegel, February 23, 2010
- A Kremlin Novel: The Power of Contempt Review by Viktor Erofejew, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 29, 2009
- Medvedev adviser Surkov is said to have written a political thriller , Reuters, August 14, 2009
Individual evidence
- ↑ Did Kremlin political chief really write murky gangster novel? , The Independent, September 14, 2009
- ↑ Виктор Ерофеев: Я не русофоб! ( Memento of the original from September 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Literaturnaja gaseta, November 11, 2009
- ↑ A Kremlin Novel: The Power of Contempt , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 29, 2009
- ↑ Russki Pioner ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , No. 11, October 2009 (translation from Russian)
- ↑ Серебренников поставит "Околоноля", когда закончит с "Мертвыми душами" , RIA Novosti, October 5, 2009
