"Man and His Surroundings" by Fazil Iskander, summary

The novella "Man and His Surroundings" was created in 1993. This book is a philosophical and satirical epic, in which the author, through his own life experiences, weaves together childhood memories, portraits of friends, and reflections on conscience, God, and power. While the work has not been adapted into a film or received any special awards, it logically concludes the author’s series of works dedicated to the fictional town of Mukhus and the Abkhazian village of Chegem.

Muhus meetings and rapier duels

The story begins in the seaside restaurant "Amra" in the town of Mukhus. Stepan Timofeevich, a former Moscow professor of Marxism, appears in town, driven mad by the editors’ reluctance to publish his long-standing work on Lenin. This madman impersonates the leader of the revolution, declaring, "Lenin will march again!" The author recalls his meetings with Stepan in Moscow, the story of how his poems were published in a magazine thanks to a careerist editor, and his stay in a suburban mental hospital. The conversation with the pseudo-Lenin devolves into a satirical discussion of Bolshevism, morality, and reform.

At the next table sits Yura, nicknamed "The Philosopher-Mystic," a former renowned foil fencer. His wife left him for a wealthy businessman, and Yura challenged him to a duel. The two met on a lawn by the Gumista River, but the duel was interrupted by elderly people from the village of Lykhny, led by Yura’s grandfather. Later, Yura’s former ward, Lyusya, arrived with her son, Mitya, who recognized Yura as his father. At "Amra," Yura debates with the artist Andrei Tarkilov and a fashionable lawyer about ethics, aesthetics, equality, and faith in God.

The author recalls catching sparrowhawks on a green hill with policeman Ruslan. The wait for the bird alternates with memories of an acquaintance’s serious illness and the betrayal of his former comrade, Serge, who, after Beria’s arrest in 1953, fearfully declared to the KGB that he knew nothing about his friends. Ruslan recounts his service, kite hunting, and his son, Timurchik, who saved the family hearth with the phrase, "The car crashed." Having caught the hawk, the hunters release it back into the wild.

Zaur’s fate and childhood memories

The central story is that of Zaur, the son of a Chegem woman named Saida and a doctor. In 1936, Zaur remembers Nestor Lakoba’s funeral, and in 1937, his father is arrested and taken to Magadan. The boy grows up with a sense of the ugliness of the Stalin era, seeks fulfillment in boxing, and later studies at the history department in Moscow. As an employee of the institute in Mukhus, Zaur develops the idea of leasing relations on collective farms.

Zaur’s love for Vika progresses through encounters in the rain, rendezvous in a beach chair warehouse, and the school principal’s office. They are caught by newspaper editor Avtandil Avtandilovich, and later Zaur is interrogated by a KGB investigator for breaking the city council chairman’s window. Zaur’s attempt to convey his ideas on agriculture to the Central Committee ends with a summons to the regional committee secretary, Abesolomon Nartovich, who dismisses the idea as "Bukharinist." A disillusioned Zaur confronts a policeman in the park, pays him bail, and then beats him. Vika, frightened, locks the door on Zaur and soon marries another man.

The author returns to his childhood, recalling his father’s testimony in 1905. The boy in Mukhus experiences the arrest of his uncle Riza, his father’s exile to Iran in 1938, and the arrest of his uncle Samad. He longingly awaits his elderly grandfather, Vartan, from the village of Esheri, who regularly brings him fruit in a wicker basket. Vartan remains loyal to the family out of gratitude for Uncle Samad’s defense in court before the Revolution.

Legends and ancient dialogues

The short story "Stars and People" tells the story of the peasant Bata and his foster brother, the prince and lawyer Safar. Safar asks Bata to steal a spirited mare from a peasant, while he himself rapes Bata’s wife, Nazibrola, during the night. Bata doesn’t kill Safar for his mother’s milk, but sets conditions: tell the teacher Astamyr everything and never share a roof with him again. Teacher Astamyr, shocked by the fall of his best student, dies from an accidental gunshot. Sixty years later, old Bata meets Prince Safar at a feast and stabs him with a dagger.

The section "Manuscript Found in a Cave" is framed as a philosophical dialogue between Socrates in an Athenian prison with Theodosius and the Apsilan Naveus. Socrates discusses the subordination of the body to the spirit, true courage, and the nature of politicians and robbers. Naveus records the conversation and adds notes on the unrest in Apsilia, hiding the parchment in a Chegem cave.

Capital authors and trips abroad

In the short story "Sea of Charm," the author describes life in Moscow. An attempt to hail a taxi turns into an encounter with biologist Boris Borzov, who defended a dissertation on "shellless eggs." The author recalls Borzov’s student adventures, his alleged hypnotic abilities, and his protests against the professors. Later, the author speaks to the students at a literary evening.

The next novella describes the author’s trip to a congress in Palermo. There, he strolls through an orange grove with a general and listens to his stories about the dismantling of nuclear missiles. From there, the writer flies to New York, endures traffic congestion, meets a Sicilian taxi driver, and attends a meeting with his compatriots, where he debates with American feminists and visits a jazz club.

In the short story "Old Men’s Revelry by the Sea," Mukhus veterans gather on the deck of the Amra: former actor Timur Aslanovich, auto mechanic and White Bandit Mikhail Arkadyevich, football player Zhora Gurgenidze, and former caretaker Shaliko, who invented the meeting with Einstein. The old men drink wine, eat satsivi, and reminisce about their past lives, Prince Oldenburg, Stalin, and Paichadze. Businessman Archil Archilovich appears in a Japanese robe.

Almanac, Balcony Drama, and the Military Cross

In the chapter "Lenin and Uncle Sandro," Stepan Timofeevich tells fantastical stories about Stalin being frozen by Franco and meeting the accountant Inna from Ivanovo on the Admiral Nakhimov. Uncle Sandro from Chegem appears and tells a parable about a shopkeeper in a cream-colored jacket who was robbed of his money on the bus by a pickpocket, and the shopkeeper ripped out his pockets to avoid acknowledging the other’s nobility.

The short story "Oh, My Patron!" is about the author’s participation in the uncensored almanac "Metropol" in 1979. International editor Albert Alexandrovich attempts to erase the "border guards" from the author’s story and change the name of the hero, Viktor Maksimovich, seeing anti-Soviet undertones everywhere. Years later, the author attended his tragicomic funeral, surrounded by his former admirers.

In the short story "Fear," literature teacher Viktor Grekov is vacationing at a sanatorium with his singer wife, Zina, and their son, Alyosha. Grekov notices that his four-year-old son is wandering out onto the ninth-floor balcony at night. Overwhelmed by fear for his child, Grekov entangles the balcony railing with ropes and belts, steals a clothesline, and then decides to jump down to "let the balcony have its victim." After jumping onto the eighth-floor balcony, he overhears an argument about Blok, intervenes in the conversation, and then learns that his son was simply urinating on the balcony. Returning, he slaps his quarrelsome wife and restores order to the family.

The final novella, "Pshada," tells the story of retired General Alexei Yefremovich. In 1945, in Budapest, at the grave of a murdered adjutant, he executed two captured German officers. Decades later, in Moscow, the general is tormented by the memory of this act and the fact that he has forgotten his native Abkhaz language. He recalls his wound at the Klukhor Pass, the German hospital, his escape from the concentration camp through a sewer ditch in the muck, the help of a kind woman named Masha, an old beekeeper and a German shepherd, the help of a teacher named Alexandra Sergeyevna, and shelter with his father’s friend, Ashot Sargsyan. After receiving a brochure called "Good News" from a girl on the street, the general goes into a barbershop, gets into a fight with a hooligan, remembers his mother, Chegem, his deceased brother, and the word "Pshada" (calm), and dies in the barber’s chair.