Seven Lives

«“Seven Lives” — like that garden of diverging paths, when a person steps onto one path, but could have taken a step to the left or a step to the right and ended up... somewhere in a completely different life? Or another death? Or the same one? This book — is an attempt to explore all directions, to return and recount how it all ends». Zakhar Prilepin «Prilepin tries to trace the different branches of fate, to find forks in the past — and to see how it all would have turned out if in each of them one small, inconspicuous screw could have been turned. …True great literature; life itself, cast into words, and pure reader's happiness». Galina Yuzefovich «“Seven Lives” — perhaps the most personal book by Zakhar Prilepin. Here is a lot of the author himself: with his unresolved pain, fervent love, unquenched rage. This book — is reproduced silence: you want to ask something of your interlocutor, but you understand that you won’t get an answer because deep inside, there boils something that is not usually spoken of, and words for it seem to be absent… So you don’t ask him anything. Yet he answers you anyway». Sergey Kumysh, «Fontanka.ru» «Dizziness from “Seven Lives”. You walk around both drunk and happy, and filled to the brim with some important knowledge… As if you were taken apart into screws — and then put back together, correctly. You stand, examining yourself in the mirror: how did I live before this?.. The mechanics of storytelling — are overseas. That’s how Hemmingway built his texts, Jack London and Truman Capote worked this way. The literary tradition — is Russian, from Gogol to Gazdanov and further: to Rasputin, Belov. And the style — is Prilepin's. You cannot confuse it with anything else. In «Seven Lives», Prilepin broke through again, worked at the limit of his capabilities and went beyond that limit». Dmitry Filippov, «Literary Russia»