I've just finished reading A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by a Booker Prize-winning author, George Saunders, in which he analyses seven Russian XIX century short stories and delivers a master class on writing, reading and life. It's an ingenious workbook for writers and geeky readers who obsess about structure, flow, language and meaning. George Saunders, who teachers creative writing at Syracuse University in New York, accomplished a luminous and hilarious read, which also helped me reconnect with the literature's best short story tellers - Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev and Gogol. 

The stories Saunders picked for his book stayed with me. I tried to describe them to a friend but none of the adjectives I sampled ("great", "epic", "thought-provoking") would do - until I got it. These stories made me feel uncomfortable. See for yourself.

In Tolstoy's "Master and Man", an arrogant egotist never reforms. No character transformation from the moral-ethical giant!

In Chekhov's "In the Cart", a woman is forced to live a hard, boring life of a provincial teacher no one appreciates. There is no hope for her to get out, no Prince Charming comes to the rescue either.

In Turgenev's "The Singers", peasants are deeply touched by the holy beauty of music - only to get utterly wasted later, the only thing they know.

In Gogol's "The Nose", a sycophant who loses his nose gets it back and continues to live a shallow life, chasing skirts. 

In Chekhov's "The Darling", a woman only becomes alive when attached to a man. She has no opinion of her own, no purpose. She never learns. 

"Alyosha the Pot" follows orders, never causes trouble, gets pushed around a lot. What does Tolstoy do? He kills him. End of. Life is unfair. 

In those short stories (all Russian short stories?) there are no happy endings, no escapism - Bridgerton it is not. You root for Alyosha the Pot to stand up to his father, but he meekly resigns to his fate, like any poor uneducated young man in the turn of the century Russia. You hope that "The Darling" starts to love herself but her clingingness never subsidies. You want Chekhov to give his schoolteacher "In the Cart" some hope at the end of the day, but she just cries "Mama!" and bursts into tears. It's just like in life - we don't get our big breaks and instead are repeatedly crushed down with a myriad of tiny disappointments until we harden with resilience. 

​The truth of these stories made me feel uncomfortable. But it gave me some consolation too. We live in seriously testing times which have exposed human flaws like never before. News stories about the UK government officials giving away huge contracts to their mates make us feel indignant, but what of the well-publicised reluctance of some people to get vaccinated against Covid-19? These jabs, a triumph of science and technology, are our way out to save lives, open economies, help people get back to work and improve mental health of billions of people after months of lockdowns. Yet the reluctance is understandable too: some are worried about long-term side effects of vaccines, others do not trust their governments. People who refuse to get jabs are selfish. Consciously or not, they rely on the herd immunity, same as people who throw litter rely on someone else to clean the streets after them. What to think?

I found that uncomfortable stories helped me attune my own compass to today's moral dilemmas. I will not forget PPE contracts awarded to Tories' mates at the next General Election, nor will I hire a Moscow-based photographer whose otherwise busy Instagram account stayed silent during anti-corruption protests in Russia. I'm proud of the UK government's success with the vaccination roll-out, and I understand that posting #FreeNavalny may cause one lose certain clients, but unlike women or peasants in the XIX century Russia, most of us have the agency to make choices and I, for one, want to do the right thing. 

Come to think of it, the best stories have always been uncomfortable. You may watch Emily in Paris but you'll forget it in a week. It's a Sin, on the other hand, will haunt you. Writers like Lionel Shriver, Kazuo Ishiguro, Mohsin Hamid, Svetlana Alexievich take on difficult issues and odious human behaviour which get under the skin. Their books are sometimes - often even - not well received by the general public because they force us to consider our own flaws and skeletons in the closet. But you know your conscience is working extra hard when you feel frustrated having been denied a happy ending in a story you've invested in.

The reason uncomfortable stories stand out is because there aren't many of them around. As Kazuo Ishiguro pointed out in a recent interview, a "climate of fear" is preventing some people from writing what they want. "I very much fear for the younger generation of writers" who are self-censoring by avoiding writing from certain viewpoints or including characters outside their immediate experiences. He said they may be concerned that an "anonymous lynch mob will turn up online and make their lives a misery". God forbid a white creative comes up with a black protagonist or expresses a non-liberal mainstream view on consumption of meat, transgender, sweat shops or climate crisis. 

At the beginning of the year I felt a little dispirited as neither books nor TV series I consumed got through to me. But I now I feel reinvigorated. True, reading Tolstoy and Chekhov makes any - even Booker-Prize winning writers - feel like they'll never be good enough. But the lesson here for all of us is that if you have came across an uncomfortable story in a book or on screen, give yourself a break. Have a rest. And then seek another one. 

How to read in 2020?

The answer is widely. 

Think diversity - not in the overused corporate virtue-signalling context - but rather in a sense of striving to consume many different opinions, expressed by people who live in a different land, age and circumstances. Travel the world through works of fiction and sprinkle a little foreignness onto your customary Anglo-Saxon fare. Take up new genres: a sci-fi adventure or a fantasy tale may well surprise you. Not convinced? Putin's latest move to give more power to State Council, a previously advisory parliamentary committee in Russia, surprised many. Interestingly, in his latest book The Secret Commonwealth: a Book of Dust Volume II, Philip Pullman described just such a move (and its consequences) by a scheming central character, Marcel Delamare. Still think children's fantasy books are not your thing?

Last year I was inspired to diversify my reading list as much as possible. Rather than choosing to read  more female authors (something male readers are statistically proven guilty of ignoring - a little hint right there!) or to vary genres, I decided to focus on international fiction.  I made it deliberately a little difficult: once I read an English writer, all English fiction was off the list until the next year. As a result, I simply had to seek out writers from different corners of the world. I did well. Here is a full list of countries I have "travelled" to last year:

Afghanistan (Kite Runner), Belarus (Chernobyl Prayer), Canada (Station Eleven), England (Lady Chatterley's Lover), France (Adele), Germany (Alone in Berlin), Iran (Persepolis), Ireland (The House of Names), Israel (Liar), Italy (I'm Not Scared), Japan (The Last Children of Tokyo), Kyrgyzstan (Jamilia), Latvia (Soviet Milk), Nigeria (My Sister the Serial Killer), Pakistan (Unmarriageable), Russia (Rock, Paper Scissors), Romania (The Land of Green Plums), South Korea (The Vegetarian), Sweden (Let the Right One In), Switzerland (Agnes), Syria (Death at Intervals), Turkey (Red Haired Woman) and the USA (White Houses).

That's nice stats. So what has made my reading journey so spectacular? Here are my thoughts.

I contemplated things from a different perspective. 
Russians and Brits alike love reading books about the Second World War. There is, if we are ready to admit this to ourselves, a certain comfort in a familiar angle. The Nazis are sometimes referred to as simply the Germans. The baddies are based in Berlin. You get the gist. A friend of a friend recommended I read Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada, a classic novel about the grassroots resistance in 1940s Berlin. The original German title of the book is even more poignant: "Every Many Dies Alone". It is a devastating but also a humorous and a life-affirming novel which placed me in a seemingly unfamiliar setting. Yet some pages in I was nodding as I was reading about repressions, fear, neighbours who reported each other to the authorities and ordinary people being extraordinary brave. 

I felt humbled by my own ignorance. 
I was six years old when a nuclear reactor exploded in Chernobyl on 26 April 1986. It is now common knowledge that the Soviet authorities did everything to suppress the news and the extent of the catastrophe. Indeed, Mikhail Gorbachev, who was in power at the time, didn't make a public announcement about Chernobyl until after the 9 May, the Victory Day public holiday in the Soviet Union. Chernobyl disaster eventually made it front-page news but up until recently my understanding of it was limited. It was a tragedy for the Ukraine, which still bears scars. I had no idea though about the catastrophic effect Chernobyl had on Belarus until I read Svetlana Alexievich's brilliant oral history book Chernobyl Prayer: Voices from Chernobyl. 

I have read nearly all the books by the Nobel-prize winning Belorussian author so I should have known what I was getting myself into. Her books are without exception - painful, raw, brutal and shocking. Yet nothing prepared me for Chernobyl: I was in tears first few pages in. Perhaps, I am not selling this book well. It certainly isn't a dreamy romantic novel. Just trust me when I say this: read this book. It is the oral history of humanity set in a place few of us have been to or will ever visit. Travel there with Alexievich and let her be your guide. 

I felt inspired to travel to new places. 
Anyone been to Pakistan? Keen to explore Lahore? I am. Unlike my previous recommendation, Unmarriageable, a retelling of Pride and Prejudice based in modern day Pakistan, is a joyous and light read. The author, Sonia Kamal, has been obsessed with Jane Austin all her life. This is her tribute to the master storyteller. Kamal stayed true to the classic plot, but she also managed to fill her work with delicious Pakistani cuisine, local customs and wonderful philological tidbits. A middle-class Pakistani who speaks better English than Urdu is apparently colloquially called a "burger", while if your English isn't up to scratch, you'd be referred to as "paratha". Wonderful, isn't it?

I discovered brilliant books I should have read a long time ago. 
Ever heard raving reviews of a recently published book from several different sources and thought "I'm too cool to jump on this bandwagon, I'll let the dust settle first."? Me too. The more accolades something receives the greater my resistance. The thing is - books won't go anywhere. The good ones will stay and bring joy years later. Up until last year I have not read the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Thankfully, as I was browsing articles with recommendations on international fiction, I came across this bestseller and immediately ordered a copy. It deserves every praise it gets. 

I read my first ever graphic novel.
I ran out of books during a weekend trip to Slovakia. Fortuitously, I stumbled upon a bookshop with an English section. It's always interesting to see what gets stocked in a fairly random place like Bratislava. Marjani Satrapi's bestselling graphic memoir, Persepolis was on the shelf.  It's the most delightful read and a great way to try to understand modern Iran. 

I stumbled upon a real gem. 
I was opportunistically looking through a book selection in a charity shop in Chiswick when I saw a slim volume with a familiar name: Chingiz Aitmatov. Aitmatov was a Kyrgyz-born Soviet writer, who wrote both in Russian and Kyrgyz, famous for his novels, such as "A Day Lasts Longer than a Century", but I haven't read anything by him myself. I bought his novella Jamilia and was deeply touched by a beautifully told love story. Russian prose like Russian classical music has an unmistaken cadence to it. Enthralling. 

I discovered people who share my passion for international fiction. 
I picked up a copy of Soviet Milk by a Latvian writer Nora Ikstena at Waterstones on Piccadilly. It was beautifully bound and published by Pereine, a publishing house specialising in contemporary European fiction. I enjoyed Ikstena's story about three generations of women in Soviet Latvia, which, by the way, made my weekend trip to Riga especially enjoyable. I also learned that Pereine Press runs a subscription service where you can sign up to receive their well-curated new books. Indeed, this model allows them to make bold choices, commission new translations regularly and let readers discover books outside the mainstream market. It makes a wonderful present too!

I hope I made a convincing argument to read more widely. 
​
"We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment no matter what."

George Santayana said this about travel, but I think it relates to books too. 

Right now a couple of friends and I having a pretty heated discussion about the upcoming UK elections: some are supporting Labour and its socialist policies, others are criticising Jeremy Corbyn and are querying his ability to execute the Labour manifesto. Debates on Facebook are a little bit pointless because everyone knows that your comment may be removed if your friend feels offended by it. Or worse: you yourself may be un-friended in one click. Another problem with arguing on Facebook is that typically you may be juggling several things at once like tinkering with a spreadsheet and typing which means your brain is never really fully engaged with either activity. Finally, a lot has been written about the silos environment created on Facebook, and it's very true: however different our views are on Jeremy Corbyn, ultimately my Facebook friends and I have a lot more in common than not. We are mostly in our 30-40s, well educated, independent and well travelled. We could learn something from each other but when it comes to truly opposing views or new information, social media isn't the right environment to challenge your views.

The best way to get yourself better educated is to read. Well-researched and elegantly written non-fiction books and long-reads published in reputable media offer an opportunity to consider matters properly, to digest the facts and to form your own opinion in the absence of social media buzz. Recently I came across a number of start-ups which summarise business and self-help books and deliver bullet point digests to those who "don't have time to read". I was astonished that these apps are gaining popularity. Who are these people who want summarised conclusions such as "sugar is bad for you", "meditation is good for you", "it's all about the feedback loop" without understanding why? Who are these authors who have spent years researching, writing and editing books and then agree to have them abridged into sound bites? Apart from getting all the facts right, reading in private (as opposed to social media reading) allows you to hide your ignorance, take time to think and make your own (as opposed to popular) judgement calls.

I recently read Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari , which could well be one of the best books I've ever read. If you haven't read it yet, order it now - you won't regret it. In his book Harari takes readers on a 100,000 year journey from the time when homo sapiens were just one of the homo species (alongside Neanderthals, Denisovans etc.) and to the present day when modern science (bio-engineering, cyborg engineering, nanotechnology, etc.) suggests that soon homo sapiens (us!) may disappear as the new species evolve to replace us. Last time I read about Neanderthals was at school and I was surprised to discover that we didn't evolve from them. Instead, about 50,000 years ago, Sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans were almost (but not quite) entirely separate species. Modern anthropology suggests that Sapiens drove other homo species to extinction (because Sapiens had superior social skills and technology - they cooperated, hunted and fought better than other species). Sapiens did the same to animals. It is us who have destroyed much of the the indigenous fauna of Australia and the Americas. I probably would have tried to hide my ignorance at a dinner party but reading a book gave me time to catch up on prehistoric genocide. 

It's impossible to take time to think about the role of capitalism in the foundation of the modern society because just merely saying the word makes some people's blood boil. Yet capitalism in its objective sense is nothing but an economic or political system in which means of production and distribution are privately owned (as opposed to owned by the state). Harari is able to explore the merits of capitalism dispassionately as a good academic should (and newspapers never will). The media are unlikely to ever say something like "I don't know", yet Harari examines the proliferation of patriarchy in all medieval cultures of the world, examines its possible causes and finally admits that none of the theories which attempt to explain why is it that men rule the world makes much sense. "If, as is being demonstrated today so clearly, the patriarchal system has been based on unfounded myths rather than on biological facts, what accounts for the universality and stability of this system?"

Much of the book is dedicated to religion. This is the matter we can hardly discuss in depth in a conversation. This is because it is very personal. Yet when Harari compares world's most prominent religions side by side, it becomes clear why Buddhism is today gaining popularity in the West. I would not want to be converted to any religion by some missionary, yet reading about a religion which recognises that human suffering is not caused by devil or relieved by god, makes me pause and listen. Buddhism is based on the idea that suffering is a human condition: "no matter what the mind experiences, it usually reacts with craving, and craving always involves dissatisfaction. When the mind experiences something distasteful, it craves to be rid of irritation. When the mind experiences something pleasant, it craves that the pleasure will remain and will intensify. Therefore, the mind is always dissatisfied and restless." Buddhism teaches to accept things - sadness, pain, joy - as they are, to live in the present and to practise meditation to help us do that.  It helps that modern neuroscience confirms the benefits of mindfulness Siddhartha Gautama had been banging on about around 500 BC. 

Let's fight the fake news and post-truth, sound bites and click bates by reading books (unabridged). It takes time, attention and dedication to read a book - the opposite is true for the Daily Mail headlines. To say that you don't have time to read is to say that you don't care about the sharpness of your mind or the quality of your judgement. I am convinced that readers (not zealous men of faith or driven entrepreneurs or ambitious politicians) is the one modern tribe that makes this world a better place.

Hilary Mantel, an English author, who has won Booker Prize twice for her historical fiction novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies and appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) earlier this year, caused a media storm last week.

The Guardian published her story The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: August 6th 1983, previewing Mantel’s collection of short stories, published today. The story is fictional, but it is set in Mantel’s flat in Windsor, situated behind a private hospital, where the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had an eye operation in 1983. In an interview to The Guardian, Mantel admitted to feeling “boiling detestation" for Thatcher. Some condemned the author for her work and the views she expressed. 

What are we to make of it? Is it “bad taste” to fantasise about the assassination of someone already dead? Is it ignorant to view a historic political figure in black-and-white? Or is criticising fiction for its content akin to censorship?

I will be honest with you. When I first came across this media story, I furrowed my brow at Mantel. Thatcher died just a year ago, and I am in favour of de mortuis nihil nidi bonus - let’s not speak ill of the dead. I’d like to think that The Telegraph, which decided against the publication of the story, had followed the similar reasoning, but in all likelihood, the editors simply feared antagonising The Telegraph readers. 

On Sunday I read the story. It is a very well written work of fiction with Mantel’s effortless imagery and masterful storytelling. It is daring as Mantel describes the captive woman sharing the assassin’s sentiment and offering to trade places with him: “You go and make the tea and I’ll sit here and mind the gun.” The story's plot seems to me one-dimensional and lacking in depth, but it’s compelling enough. It is a very good story. 

It is with this in mind, that I ask myself again: “Is it fair to criticise the artist for her choice of muse?” I think not. Mantel refers to Thatcher as “the very stuff of drama” and “a fantastic character”. Damian Barr has put it well: “It’s a horror story for Thatcher’s fans, a wish-fulfillment fantasy for her detractors. Either way, it’s shocking.” Isn’t it what we want from art?

Instead of condemning Mantel, I am now inclined to applaud her. I do not share her views on Margaret Thatcher but I admire her for her courage and determination to challenge herself and her audience. “As a writer you have a choice to make - are you going to accept censorship or not?” Perhaps it helps to have a couple of Bookers already standing on your mantelpiece, but equally, accolades may have a taming effect. Not for Mantel: “I believe in walking that line. You mustn’t be too timid to risk getting it wrong."

It's been years since I've read any poetry. Then last week I found myself easing into a 5-minute forward bend, listening to one. I was at a yin yoga practice, a slow-paced, meditative style of yoga with postures held for longer periods of time. My teacher, Norman Blair, occasionally adds a contemplative experience to a class by telling a story. 

This time he read us a poem by the German-born American writer Charles Bukowski.  Here it is:

the bluebird
there’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see you.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that he’s in there.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay down, do you want to mess me up?
you want to screw up the works?
you want to blow my book sales in Europe?

there’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
                                                                                                         but I’m too clever, 
                                                                                                         I only let him out at night sometimes
                                                                                                         when everybody’s asleep.
                                                                                                         I say, I know that you’re there, so don’t be sad.

                                                                                                         then I put him back,
                                                                                                         but he’s still singing a little in there, 
                                                                                                         I haven’t quite let him die
                                                                                                         and we sleep together like that
                                                                                                         with our secret pact
                                                                                                         and it’s nice enough to make a man weep, 
                                                                                                         but I don’t weep, 
                                                                                                         do you?

I took the liberty to record my own reading of the poem, which is available here.

One of the best novels I’ve read this year is Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It’s about a feisty girl Ifemelu and an ambitious boy Obinze who fall in love as teenagers in Nigeria but then are separated as Ifemelu leaves for the United States. Ifemelu is smart and well-educated, she speaks fluent English, having been reading English literature since childhood. At an American university she is regarded as something exotic, treated as a cliché and is having to re-invent herself to fit in. 

She cannot possibly complain of heat because “she is from Africa” or expect people to know where Nigeria is on a map. When she returns home to Lagos, Ifemelu finds herself distant from friends she used to be on the same wavelength with, as they now have different values, are obsessed with status, material possessions, dress differently and do not really understand her.

I suppose the reason I liked the novel so much is because it rang true to me. I even recognised myself, having similarly moved from Russia to Britain and having had to adjust to the new environment. I still get scolded for complaining about the cold: “But you are Russian!”, and I had to teach myself to be patient as I explain the whereabouts of Ekaterinburg, the third largest city in Russia. 

In his book How Proust Can Change Your Life, Alain de Botton quotes Proust:

"In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity.”

de Botton argues that “it is the only way in which art can properly affect rather than simply distract us from life.”

The experiences of fictional characters give us permission to re-define what’s “normal”.  Recognising yourself or your own anxieties in a character from a XIX century novel is a way to appreciate that what you are going through isn’t just your own trial but something previously endured and accepted by the rest of the humankind. 

Reading fiction can also help us be more sensitive to our own feelings and feelings of others. A novel may sometimes put a finger on something we’ve felt but have not quite formulated in our minds. In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid expresses how a Pakistani student felt about Princeton, when he first arrived on campus: “Princeton inspired in me the feeling that my life was a film in which I was the star and everything was possible.” I must have felt the same way during my first week in Oxford but I’ve never been able to put it quite so succinctly.

To quote Proust again:

“If we read the new masterpiece of a man of genius, we are delighted to find in it those reflections of ours that we despised, joys and sorrows which we had repressed, a whole world of feeling we had scorned and whose value the book in which we discover them suddenly teaches us."  

Have you been recently affected by a novel? Leave a comment below

Have you ever read Shchi, a short story by a Russian XIX century writer Ivan Turgenev? Here is my own loose translation:

A poor peasant widow lost her 20-year-old son, the best worker in the village. Her landlady heard about the woman’s sorrow and decided to visit her on the day of the funeral. 

The poor woman was at home, eating shchi (a simple Russian soup, with cabbage being the main ingredient), steadily swallowing one spoon of soup after another. Her face looked hollow, her eyes were red, but she appeared solemn. 

“God! How can this woman eat at this moment?”, thought her noble landlady. She recalled one spring several years ago, when she had lost her 9-month-old daughter and could not even contemplate renting a dacha for the summer.

The poor woman kept on eating.

“Tatiana! I am sorry, but didn’t you love your son? I’m surprised you didn't lose your appetite! How can you eat your shchi just now?”

“My son died", said the woman quietly. “That means I am dead too. But shchi can’t go to waste - it’s been seasoned with salt.”

The landlady just shrugged and walked away.

I remember reading this simple story at school and at that time thinking mostly about its meaning in the context of ‘the well-fed doesn’t understand the hungry’. Decades on, Turgenev’s story came to my mind as I was contemplating grief. However hard your loss hits you, life goes on.

P.S. If you are curious about Turgenev's other works, you'll find a good selection of his short stories here.