With thanks to Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings for my discovery of this book, my choice for #WITMonth turned out to be compelling reading. Margarita Khemlin's Klotsvog, (2009) was translated by Lisa C Hayden in 2019 for The Russian Library at Columbia University Press and was shortlisted for the Russian Booker, as was Khemlin's The Investigator (2012, translated by Melanie Moore for Glagoslav in 2015, see my review). Information at Wikipedia about Khemlin is sketchy but it seems that her international profile blossomed in the post-Soviet era and reading these two novels confirms my opinion that Khemlin (1960-2015) was an outstanding author of subtlety and style.

Klotsvog, with its unprepossessing title, is subtitled Notes from the Jewish Underground but its portrayal of secular Jewish life is confined to the mental landscape of its central character, the narrator Maya. Like a Soviet version of Becky Sharp from Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1847-8), Maya is on a quest to better herself. In the Stalinist USSR, upgrading from cramped and overcrowded housing becomes an all-consuming quest for Maya who engineers successive relationships to achieve an apartment of her own by the novel's end.

Like Becky, Maya is shallow, selfish, manipulative and cruel, but unlike Becky, her motivation is not merely materialistic. As noted in the Foreword by Lara Vapynya, Khemlin, the catalyst for her outrageous behaviour is fear.

Maya, like all the secular Jewish characters in her milieu, lost most of her family when they perished under the German Occupation of Ukraine during WW2. She and her mother survived through 'the evacuation' (the mass migration of 16 million western Soviet citizens to the east) during the Soviet retreat. They were among about 1.5 million East European Jews—mostly from Poland, the Ukraine, and Russia—who, in contrast to near annihilation of the Jews in the rest of German occupied Europe, survived behind the lines. Wikipedia tells us, however, that in the postwar era, Stalin reignited anti-Semitism, with campaigns against 'rootless cosmopolitans' (i.e. Zionists), among whom were writers and intellectuals arrested for 'espionage' and 'treason' beginning in 1948 and culminating with the Night of the Murdered Poets.

The surviving fragments of the Jewish community had good reason to fear a Soviet version of Hitler's Final Solution, and they were also haunted by the long history of pogroms in Ukraine, Poland and Russia. In the novel, Maya—who gradually becomes aware of how her suppressed Jewish identity impacts on her life—thinks that catastrophe is inevitable. She determines to live as well as she can in the meantime.

My romantic infatuation with Viktor Pavlovich had overshadowed my thinking, leaving me with just enough awareness to think only of my love for him, especially since this was my first love. But the horrible assumptions hovering all around literally drove me into a corner and forced me to return, again and again, to the days in evacuation that had brought so many deprivations.

Of course, the problem of the future fate of the Jewish people—of which I was a constituent part due to my birth—rattled me. But things were working out from that angle, too: I could live pleasantly and with dignity alongside a reliable person, at least for an allotted time, until new ordeals. Be that as it may. (p.14)

Khemlin, as I said, is a subtle author, and Maya, as I said, is shallow. So with only occasional insights into Maya's mental landscape of fear, the novel romps through her energetic efforts to improve her lot while she awaits her fate.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/08/08/klotsvog-by-margarita-khemlin-translated-by-... ( )

‘’Though I had nobody to call, I often picked it up and said whatever came into my head, paying no attention to the piercing dial tone inside the receiver. I could dial any incomplete number and speak into the quietness. But I liked that I wasn’t pretending to actually speak. Because I never embellish reality.
But that’s not my point.’’

August is Women In Translation month, so it seemed that the time had come for me to read Klotsvog, one of the most particular books I’ve had the pleasure to read recently, an exceptional offering of Eastern European Literature.

We are in Ukraine, during the Soviet era, a few months before the monster who answered to the name Stalin finally dies and rids the world of his cruelty. Maya, a bright young woman and member of the persecuted Jewish community, has to find the balance between her personal aspirations and her heart that seems to have a (fickle) mind of its own. Struggling to cope with family relationships and love affairs, Maya is a woman fascinating in her clarity and challenging in the numerous contradictions of her character. A daughter, a mistress, a wife, a mother, a pedagogue...Many roles and she fails in most of them. And yet, she is one of the most fascinating characters you’ll ever meet in the pages of a book.

Following the Translator’s Note by Lisa C. Hayden, a beautiful and moving text on her understanding of Khemlin’s heroine, we enter the world of Maya and her misbehaviour. In powerful, clear prose and clever dialogue, we spend moments in the company of a story that is sarcastic, bitter, sad. Maya’s thoughts are masterfully conveyed and there is very little attention to politics, if at all. Yes, this is a story taking place in the Soviet era but the emphasis is on human relationships and choices and although one could say that the plot itself isn’t groundbreaking or particularly intricate, Maya is a universe in itself.

‘’You know, Fima, a marriage stamp in a passport isn’t a verdict or a sentence. Keep that in mind. This is a difficult time, but I won’t hang on to you. I’m registered here. I’m a mother. And you’re a drunk and nothing else. You’ll be fired from work soon, then you’ll be a social parasite.’’

Our heroine is a highly contradictory and controversial character. She aspires to be independent and yet she regards her heritage as a burden and a source of danger. In my opinion, Maya is a very realistic depiction of a woman’s doubts and insecurities. And if she wants to put on lipstick while everything around her is falling apart, she will do so. She refuses to sacrifice her life, even though her choices are quite selfish, and her children do little to make her secure. Misha is a troublesome boy and Ella, her daughter, is terror personified. It may sound cruel but these two are the worst offsprings nature can produce...So she makes an effort to keep up appearances but she won’t apologize no matter how unusual or ‘’unacceptable’’ her choices may be. She doesn’t pretend to be humble and meek, and despite her severe flaws, she is honest to herself. Selfish? Yes, but realistic nonetheless.

Maya is one more proof that Eastern European Literature can create numerous memorable and highly controversial female characters. I loved her. I know, it may be difficult to even understand her but I couldn’t help siding with her and feeling sorry for the outcomes of her actions. The only weakness I couldn’t forgive was her infatuation with men. Men that are weak. And she loved them all. Or maybe not...It is exactly this absurd feeling that may prove to be her downfall…

‘’It was cold. There were stars in the sky, And the sky was dark, dark blue. A deep, deep sky.
I set fire to some newspaper and stuck it inside that mountain.
It immediately went up in flames.
It burned a long time.
The neighbours ran over in droves to look: they were afraid it was a house fire.
No, I said, it might be a house fire for somebody, but not for you.’’

Many thanks to Columbia University Press and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com ( )

Maya Klotsvog is just doing what she needs to to get by, to get ahead, to have a moment to herself, to put a little aside against the hard times. She's living the Soviet Union, in Kiev, and her passport marks her as a Jew. She spent the war in exile in Kazakhstan and she's all too aware of the precariousness of life for those of Jewish descent in the Soviet Union. She also knows that she's going to have to do what is needed to get ahead.

As Maya narrates her own story, it's clear that she's massaging the details, of her first relationship, then her hasty marriage to her boss, a sad man who lost his entire family to the Nazis, then her second marriage, and the next relationship, meant to make things just a little easier. Maya is self-centered and manipulative, using her beauty to avoid working, or to improve her circumstances, but she uses her relentlessness in service to her family occasionally as well and I was left with the impression of having read about one of the few personality types that could improve their circumstances under an intolerable regime. Just because she left a trail of destroyed lives behind her is no reason not to root for Maya to finally get what she wants, at least until she sees something else.

Margarita Khemlin was a Jewish-Ukrainian novelist and short story writer whose work has not been widely available outside of the former Soviet Union. Columbia University Press has begun publishing untranslated works under the Russian Library imprint. This novel is both a fascinating character study and a stark look a what ordinary life looked like in the middle of the last century in the Soviet Union. ( )

I love reading Margarita Khemlin's work because she is such an alchemist, creating surprisingly vivid worlds and complex characters out of very simple language. Maya Klotsvog, the narrator of Klotsvog, is a Jewish woman from Ukraine who tells the story of her life, from evacuation as a child during World War 2 through difficulties with her husbands and children.

(There's more on my blog, here.) ( )