"Jacob’s Ladder" by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, summary

The novel was written in 2015. This book is a comprehensive family chronicle of several generations of the Osetsky family, spanning a period from the late 19th century to 2011. The plot is based on authentic archival documents and personal letters from the writer’s grandfather, Yakov Ulitsky. In 2016, the work won third prize in the national literary competition "Big Book" and also won the reader vote.

Meeting of Jacob and Marusya

The story begins in Kyiv in 1911. A young commercial student, Yakov Osetsky, passionate about music and natural sciences, meets Maria Kerns at a Sergei Rachmaninoff concert. Marusya, the daughter of a Swiss watchmaker and a graduate of the Froebel Pedagogical Courses, aspired to become a theater actress and dancer.

A deep feeling blossoms between the young people. Soon, Marusya leaves for Moscow to study free dance at Ella Rabenek’s studio. The lovers begin a constant epistolary dialogue. In the summer of 1911, they spend a secret honeymoon in Yakov’s parents’ empty Kyiv apartment.

In the fall of 1912, Yakov volunteered for military service in the Insarsky Regiment, overcoming class and national restrictions to complete his higher education. He served in Zlatoust and Yuryuzan, working as a regimental clerk and directing a soldiers’ choir. Marusya visited him in the Urals. In 1916, the couple’s son, Genrikh, was born. The birth was difficult, Marusya barely survived, and the baby was nursed by a village wet nurse.

Links, rupture and the camp years

After the 1917 Revolution, the family moved to Moscow and settled into a communal apartment on Povarskaya Street. Yakov worked as an economist in a statistical agency and wrote a book on management theory, while Marusya tried her hand at children’s journalism and theater. A rift gradually developed between the spouses: Marusya wholeheartedly embraced Bolshevik ideas, while Yakov maintained his independence of judgment and academic skepticism.

In 1931, Yakov was arrested on charges of sabotage and sent to the Stalingrad Tractor Factory. A second arrest followed in 1933, followed by exile to Biysk, Siberia. His son, Genrikh, took his father’s arrests hard, was ashamed of his status as an enemy of the people, and became interested in aviation and metro construction.

In 1936, Marusya filed for divorce in absentia from her exiled husband. She became close to an old acquaintance from Kyiv, Professor Ivan Belousov, who was soon executed in 1937. In Biysk, Marusya’s cousin, nurse Asya Smolkina, came to visit Yakov. A brief romance blossomed between Asya and Yakov.

In 1948, Yakov was arrested for the third time for collaborating with the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and consulting with Solomon Mikhoels on the Middle East issue. His son, Genrikh, filed statements disowning his father with the Party Committee and state security agencies. Yakov received a ten-year prison sentence and served his time in a labor camp for the disabled in Abezi, Komi ASSR, where he worked as a camp librarian and taught Lithuanian. After his release in late 1955, Yakov briefly returned to Moscow, where he saw his son, daughter-in-law Amalia, and thirteen-year-old granddaughter Nora. He then left with his devoted Asya Smolkina for Kalinin, where he died of a heart attack in 1956.

Nora’s fate and the birth of her son

Yakov’s granddaughter, Nora Osetskaya, grows up independent and stubborn. She is expelled from ninth grade for a school romance. She enrolls in a theater and art school and becomes a successful set designer. Nora enters into a sham marriage with her classmate, Vitya Chebotarev, a withdrawn mathematical genius.

Nora’s main passion in life became a long-term, turbulent affair with Georgian director Tengiz Kuziani. Their relationship was built on a series of joint productions and painful breakups. In 1974, after their play "Three Sisters" was banned and Tengiz left for Tbilisi again, Nora decided to have a child of her own. In 1975, her son Yurik was born, conceived by her husband, Vitya.

Vitya went into algorithm development and quantum computing, and in 1986, he stayed in the United States after attending a scientific conference. There, he found peace with his American wife, Martha. Little Yura grew up a dreamy boy with perfect pitch and color blindness. As a teenager, Yura became fascinated with the guitar and the Beatles. At fourteen, he accidentally detonated a military explosive device in his hand, injuring his wrist, but he developed his fingers for the sake of music.

American Tribulations and Return

Fearing her son would be drafted into the army during military conflicts, Nora sent sixteen-year-old Yurik to the United States to join his father in late 1991. In New York, Yurik dropped out of school, played jazz and funk on the streets, and worked as a furniture mover. Gradually, he became immersed in the bohemian milieu of the Lower East Side and developed a severe heroin addiction.

Yurik teeters on the brink of death, losing friends to illness and street fights, and narrowly avoiding prison time thanks to a misspelling of his last name in a police database. In 2000, Marta informs Nora of her son’s catastrophic condition. Nora and Tengiz fly to New York, search for Yurik, and take him to Moscow. On the plane, Yurik nearly dies from an overdose but survives. In Moscow, he undergoes lengthy rehabilitation at a drug treatment clinic and quits drugs for good.

In Moscow, Nora buries her mother, Amalia, and father, Genrikh, who died of cancer. Before his death, her father asked to be buried next to his first wife, but Nora leaves her father’s ashes in the columbarium next to his parents, Yakov and Marusya.

Completing the circle

Yurik gets a job as a simultaneous interpreter for American films and lectures on the history of jazz. At a club, he meets Liza, whom he briefly saw the day he was discharged from a drug rehabilitation clinic. Liza has an adopted son, Timofey, and a young daughter, Olya, from a previous relationship. A rare feeling of deep emotional and physical intimacy develops between Yurik and Liza. In January 2011, they have a son, whom they name Yakov.

Elderly Nora overcomes cancer and comes to Tbilisi to visit David. She attends a shadow theater performance created by the elderly Tengiz, sees him surrounded by his loved ones, and feels liberated from her long-standing love addiction.

Returning to Moscow, Nora sorts through her grandmother Marusya’s willow chest containing hundreds of Yakov’s letters, preserved since 1911. She requests access to her grandfather’s archived investigation file at the Lubyanka. Reading the interrogation reports, Nora sees her grandfather’s nobility in saving his loved ones from persecution and discovers his own father, Genrikh,’s renunciation of the arrested Yakov. Nora recognizes an unbroken chain of generations, where family traits, talents, weaknesses, and spiritual impulses are passed down through the centuries, like the steps of an invisible staircase.