Michail Schischkin

Maidenhair

«During breaks you can have coffee in the interpreter's room. This side looks out on a construction site. They're putting up a new building for a refugee intake center. My white plastic cup keeps sparking right in my hands. In fact, the whole room is lit up by reflexted sparks. A welder has set himself up right outside the window. There's no one here. I can read quietly for ten minutes.»

Why have you claimed asylum? The narrator constantly has to ask this question in Russian. He works as an interpreter for the Swiss immigration agency. Day after day he translates the stories of his suffering compatriots. He too is an immigrant who has lost his family: after a difficult divorce his interactions with his son are limited to letters. The rest of his time he immerses himself in reading: «Anabasis», a historical work of Xenophon, and the (fictitious) diaries of the (real) Russian singer Isabella Juriewa (1899-2000). Russia, Switzerland, Italy – all countries where he spends time – and France, where Isabella Juriewa lived intermittently: other people’s stories, the narrators own memories as well as testimonials of times past mingle to form a polyphonic novel. The author brilliantly interweaves different storylines and basic human themes, but also love and art. «Maidenhair» shows people from their worst and also from their most beautiful side – masterly and touching.
The Russian author Michail Schischkin, who lives in Switzerland, is known internationally for his novels, which were translated into fourteen languages, and he has been awarded the three most prestigious Russian literary prizes.

(Ruth Gantert, trans. by Simon Froehling)

Open Letter, Rochester 2012

ISBN: 978-1934824368