Incident at a Junction Station

Aleksey Varlamov is a prose writer, philologist, researcher of 20th-century Russian literature, laureate of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Prize and the "Big Book" award. "Incident at a Junction Station" is not just a collection, but an entire continent of Russian life, where trains from different epochs unexpectedly converge: from pre-revolutionary exile to the tumultuous nineties. A mute mantis and a corrupt journalist, a merchant's daughter deprived of the right to speak, and a professor selling the Ghent Altarpiece for cheap passion — the heroes of this book never take the straight path. They wander through the labyrinths of unfamiliar cities, get lost in the steppe, freeze at random halts, and find lodgings where they did not expect. Varlamov writes about how frightening and beautiful it is to be human in an era when "everything has become mixed, and there is neither faith nor disbelief." This is a poignant, almost tangible prose about the Russian character in the spirit of Leskov, Bunin, and Shukshin, where the "connection" between people turns out to be the only true mystery.