"The Favorite of the Era" by Katya Kachur, summary

Katya Kachur’s "Darling of the Era" was published in 2022; it’s the author’s second book, and the entire story is told through the posthumous voice of Rodion Grinwich, who witnesses his own funeral in the very first chapter. This approach immediately sets a harsh tone: the hero’s life has already ended, and so his memory returns to those episodes where family guilt, childhood trauma, and long-held omissions have escalated into a shared tragedy.

Childhood

At the center of the book are two brothers, Rodion and Ilyusha, the sons of Sofia Mikhailovna. From an early age, Rodion is handsome, strong, ambitious, and accustomed to winning, while Ilyusha is drawn to silence, solitude, and strange little things, which he can gaze upon for a long time, almost mesmerized. A difficult bond quickly develops between them: the elder constantly pressures, the younger constantly measures himself against the elder, and even their brotherly affection is, from the very beginning, tinged with pain.

A turning point comes in childhood, when a deranged neighbor nicknamed Epoch kidnaps seven-year-old Ilyusha and holds him in her filthy apartment for two days. His parents and Rodion find the boy; doctors find no evidence of beatings or direct violence, but the horror he experienced remains with him for a long time: Ilyusha begins to stutter and refuses to talk about what happened. From that day on, everything in the house is dominated by the aftermath of that incident — the pity of adults, speech therapy sessions, shame, irritation, and fear of something no one can fully explain.

Ilyusha tries to survive this new life as best he can. He enjoys speech therapy, saves money for "The Swan Princess," recycles bottles, creates his own inner worlds, and clings to any trifle that gives him a sense of order. After the kidnapping, Rodion feels genuine guilt toward his brother for the first time, but he can’t change their relationship: his love for Ilyusha is constantly mixed with imperiousness, irritation, and a habit of considering himself the measure of others’ lives.

Growing up

As adults, the brothers take different paths. Rodion becomes a brilliant doctor, and even after death, those around him remember him as a rare specialist, and posthumous conversations recount surgeries, hospital episodes, and the near-record-breaking heart surgery he performed on a patient nicknamed "Shalushik." Meanwhile, the official image of the impeccable doctor constantly clashes with the man we see from the inside: with vanity, inner austerity, and a belated ability to look back.

Ilyusha’s entry into adulthood is far more difficult. He endures military brutality, humiliation, a broken jaw, and a wait-and-see experience with a military prosecutor. Later, he tries to escape as far from his former life as possible and, through acquaintances from the Voluntary Society for Assistance to the Army, Navy, and Navy (DOSAAF), ends up on a northern expedition. His journey in the book is that of a seemingly fragile but resilient man, who repeatedly emerges from the cruelty of others, although he almost never knows how to defend himself verbally.

At the same time, the novel explores other destinies, at first seemingly peripheral. One of them involves Sanya Pyatibratov: he lives in an empty, gloomy apartment, then gets into a serious accident, spends a long time in the hospital, and after his death, finds himself next to Rodion in the cemetery afterlife. This storyline expands the novel’s world and shows that a random, almost unnoticed human life is just as significant here as the fate of a famous doctor.

Zlatka

The book’s longest hidden plot takes us to the village of Fedotovka. There, a bloody red-haired baby — Zlatka — is found among the burdocks. The novel then details the story of three generations of village women connected to her: Nyura Korzinkina, Zinka, and Zlata herself. Their lives are spent amid poverty, hard labor, humiliation, and constant dependence on others.

Zlatka grows up as a bright, bright, and red-haired girl. At school, she excels in science rather than literature, and she escapes the village, but this doesn’t lead to a happy ending. She faces betrayal by a man nicknamed Flagellant, a sudden pregnancy, a serious injury, and new forms of disenfranchisement, when her own body and her own life are almost no longer her own.

It later emerges that Zlatka’s disappearance is only noticed by Nina Lanskaya, who by then is already connected to the city committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The chapter on the passport reveals how documents are rewritten, names are changed, and new official versions of someone else’s life are created. The novel slowly leads the reader to the idea that the crazy era of the courtyard and the old village history are much more closely connected than might initially appear.

The Mystery of the Epoch

After Rodion’s death, it’s Ilyusha who is forced to return to the past in earnest. Together with Lena, he sorts through his brother’s archives, consults lawyers, combs through financial papers, searches for old witnesses, and finds former police officer Vitaly, who was once connected to his kidnapping case. He seeks this not for a beautiful solution, but to answer an old childhood question: why did the Epoch take him and why did it choose him?

The book gradually draws together Ilyusha’s kidnapping, Zlatka’s past, the story of the forged documents, and the female line that has clung to the Greenwich family for many years, remaining invisible. Against this backdrop, Rodion also takes on a new meaning: a beloved figure, a strong and successful man, he was never able to uncover the family’s most painful truth during his lifetime, while Ilyusha, always considered weak, turns out to be the one through whom this truth finally emerges.

The finale shifts the action back to the afterlife, where Rodion has long been living alongside Epoch and the other dead at the Pyatnitsky burial ground. When a flood of light flares, Ilyusha runs toward three glowing red-haired figures, and in this vision, all the threads of the novel converge — his childhood trauma, the mystery of Epoch, and the long-standing history of the Fedotov women. Rodion lets his brother go to them, promising that he will never lose him again, and Ilyusha, who has searched for acceptance all his life, finally finds himself in the arms of those to whom he was connected more deeply than he knew.