Painful memory of the past. The new book of the patriarch

MOSCOW. The Centerpolygraph publishing house published a new book by Daniil Granin.

98 years is not the time to take stock. Another book came out from under the pen of Daniel Granin - “She and Everything Else.” The likelihood of the appearance of the next raises no doubt. Creative activity and a lively response to the difficult realities of the present day are admirable. The plot of the new novel by the patriarch, although it is about peacetime, returns the reader to the events of the Great Patriotic War. Attitude towards them becomes a marker of testing the feelings of the main characters for strength.

The inability to understand and accept, the ominous shadows of the past, the dissimilarity of mentalities can destroy the cordial affection of people living at the same time, but in different dimensions. The logic of the plot combines the history of relations between a Soviet engineer and a German girl who was born as a result of rape, with the story of Hitler’s favorite Albert Speer. The main character works on a monograph about the personal architect of the Führer, Reich Minister of Arms and Military Production, scrupulously studying his biography, projects, memoirs (Erinnerungen). Speer kept notes in his diary during his twenty years in prison for the Spandau war criminals, where he was imprisoned by the Nuremberg Trials. Dissecting the life story of this extraordinary person, Granin, following Alexander Sergeyevich, returns to the topic of incompatibility of genius and villainy.

He turns to the poet’s work again, quoting the tenth chapter of “Eugene Onegin”. Pushkin’s stanzas about the sources of Victoria on the battlefields of 1812 sound like a prediction of the inevitability of victory over fascism. It is enough to replace the name Barclay with Zhukov, and the frenzy of the people, winter and the Russian god do not leave hope for the enemy in any war.

“She and everything else” is like a concentrated solution in which much has been mixed. A love story, painful memories of the war, repressions against senior leaders in the framework of the “Leningrad affair” and other painful moments in the difficult history of our country.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru