The Aviator

By Eugene Vodolazkin

MY HEAD SPINS. I'M LYING IN A BED. WHERE AM I? WHO AM I?

A man wakes up in hospital. He has no idea who he is or how he came to be there. The doctor tells him his name, but he doesn't remember it. He remembers nothing.

As memories slowly resurface, he begins to build a picture of his former life. Russia in the early twentieth century, the turbulence of the revolution, the aftermath. But how can this be possible when the pills beside his bed are dated 1999?

In the deft hands of Eugene Vodolazkin, author of the multi award-winning Laurus, The Aviator paints a vivid, panoramic picture of life in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, richly evoking the sights, sounds and political turmoil of those days. Reminiscent of the great works of Russian literature, and shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize, it cements Vodolazkin's position as the rising star of Russia's literary scene.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Release date: May 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781786072726

Eugene Vodolazkin

Eugene Vodolazkin was born in Kiev and has worked in the department of Old Russian Literature at Pushkin House since 1990. He is an expert in medieval Russian history and folklore. Solovyov and Larionov is his debut novel. Laurus (Oneworld, 2015), his second novel but the first to be translated into English, won the National Big Book Award and the Leo Tolstoy Yasnaya Polyana Award and has been translated into eighteen languages. His third novel, The Aviator (Oneworld, 2018), was shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize and the National Big Book Award. He lives in St Petersburg.

Reviews for The Aviator

[mbinsc · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I almost gave up on this book, finding it a bit tough to read, but managed to stay with it. So glad I did! After a major revelation, the story picks up the pace and I started to bond with the characters. Interesting look at life in Russia, blending historical references with a futuristic twist. Thank you to Librarything for the free copy of this book.

[mary_baluta-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I almost gave up on this book, finding it a bit tough to read, but managed to stay with it. So glad I did! After a major revelation, the story picks up the pace and I started to bond with the characters. Interesting look at life in Russia, blending historical references with a futuristic twist. Thank you to Librarything for the free copy of this book.

[mistermelon · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very enjoyable book--as long as you're into very Russian books. I have trouble classifying this novel, but as the book says, "we never spoke of that and made no attempt to call it anything. If you call it something, you will frighten it off. If you define it, you ruin it. And we wanted to preserve it."It's so Russian that I kept reading in negative connotations to lines of dialog between characters that wasn't there; I'd get to a sentence that pointed out my understanding of the color of the last few paragraphs had been wrong and have to reread them. The parts describing the conditions in the camps can be eye opening if you've never read stuff about Russian prison camps. It's interesting to read and think about a person living through that, then living in our time.There are a ton of great lines and ideas and lines in here. About the wrongness of politicians and politics, the horribleness and inevitably of aging, but by the end the main character and the author become obsessed with trying to present a singular idea which I am not even going to try to articulate. The author did his best for the last 75 pages and I still don't quite get it. Still, I enjoyed it.**I received a free advance copy of this book in exchange for this unbiased review.**

[kcshankd · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a striking novel. Any summary would involve a number of spoilers, but I am convinced Vodolazkin will be remembered among the Russian greats. This was stirring while I read it, and even now I am struck by its daring approach to the 20th Century.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A man lies in a hospital bed. He's being cared for by a doctor and nurse, who have asked him to write down his memories as he regains them. Slowly, his life returns to him, but how is it that his memories are of events a century ago?The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin tells the story of Innokenty Platonov, who spent his childhood in a comfortable Petersburg apartment and a summer dacha, until the Revolution took the life of his father and moved him, along with his mother, from their home into a room in the apartment of a professor and his daughter. As Innokenty's memories return, he also realizes that he is no longer in his time and the doctor explains that he was part of an early Soviet experiment in freezing living men and then thawing them. He survived frozen for eighty years. His recovery isn't just physical, but in learning how to live in a time not his own. The Aviator is an odd mix of things; there's the look at the effects of being out of one's own time and the dislocation that results, there's the vivid descriptions of life in Russia before and during its most turbulent years, and finally there's the character study of Innokenty himself. It took me a while to get into the rhythms of this book, but once I had, I enjoyed it very much.

[janerawoof · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Having just read Laurus by the same author and having enjoyed it, I was thrilled to read this one. The writer shows us 20th century Russia through the eyes of a man, Innokenty Platonov, who has lived through it. We see his childhood with two outstanding events giving us two recurring metaphors--an aviator, which appears first as Innokenty and his cousin play at aviators and the novel Robinson Crusoe, which his grandmother first reads to him as a child. They appear throughout the story, with shades of meaning. Innokenty wakes up in a hospital bed, with amnesia. The doctor, Geiger, gives him a notebook to write in his impressions and memories. The latter appear out of order, with some kind of trigger. The story switches from pre- and post Russian Revolution to 1999 back and forth. We follow his years in a concentration camp, having been denounced. To fill in the missing years, Geiger gives him reading material, which will clue us in as to what happened to Innokenty during those gap years. Geiger also breaks him in gently to modern times: i.e., television, computers. The second part of the book is the thoughts of three characters. There is a heavy spiritual dimension. Even the characters' names were symbolic: Innokenty=Innocent or guileless and Anastasia, a friend from his early years=Resurrection, as was also Nastya, his latter-day girlfriend then wife. Platonov=Plato=Philosophy, and the spiritual. This novel was enthralling and quite creative. I only wish there had been Notes explaining briefly how each Russian writer mentioned in the book, fit in. Some I could figure out, but I didn't understand the reference to Lermontov for instance.Highly recommended.

[clara53_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Simply put - I was quite blown away by this book. Even though in a sort of pensive way... What an unusual story (both in format and in plot) - from a writer I have not heard before. Science fiction, historical fiction and a love story - all ingeniously fused in one. Melancholy and hope - an unlikely combination. Poignancy of horrifying remembrances and the joy of simple, happy ones - and it's hard to explain what "remembrances" mean in this case without disclosing the plot, which I am usually reluctant to do. But the protagonist and the plot moved me immensely, as well as the writing itself - humane, if one can say it about the style of writing... The slightly ambiguous ending was also a plus, I think. It was a pure pleasure to read, no matter how heart-rending at times... I will make a point to seek out this author in future. (Translation from Russian was very adequate too - accept for one small, surprising mistake right on the front page : "Translated from the Russian by Lisa C. Hayden" - where, obviously, "the" was superfluous... but it must be just the editor's mistake, not the translator's, I am sure - because the whole book was very well translated, I could sense it, mentally imagining the Russian version).I want to finish with a profound quote from the book, a real food for thought, actually: "...I thought about the nature of historical calamities - revolutions, wars, and the like. Their primary horror is not in the shooting. And not even in the famine. It is that the basest of human fervors are liberated. What is in a person that was previously suppressed by laws comes into the open. Because for many people only external laws exist. And they have no internal laws."5 stars without any hesitation.

[hubblegal-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A bewildered man wakes up in the hospital and has no memory of past events or even his name. His doctor tells him his name is Innokenty Petrovich Platonov. The doctor urges Innokenty to write down all of his thoughts and feelings. Those writings release a story of a young boy living in Russia in the early 1900’s, traveling through the Russian Revolution. Some of these memories are blurry and he wonders if they’re real, especially since he starts to see signs of now being in 1999. The above is a very bare bones description of the beginning of this complex book. I hesitate to talk too much about plot as I don’t want to spoil this masterpiece in any way for anyone. This book has so many layers and I read it slowly to absorb as much as I could. I know I’ll want to read it again someday to find other layers that I may have missed in the first reading. It’s a book that will make you think about whatever stands out for you. Possibly it will be thinking about memory and how memories can be different between different people and how events stop being real immediately after happening but live on in people’s memories. Perhaps it will have you thinking about getting older and the witnesses to your life dying so you begin to lose parts of your history. The meaning of retribution is explored in a mind opening way. It will definitely get you thinking about the importance of the written word and how it preserves history and memories.Regardless of what this book gets you thinking about, it’s a powerful, moving story in and of itself. It touched my heart in so many ways. The life of Innokenty Platonov is one that I will never forget. I’m not a talented enough writer to do justice to a book like this. All I can say is that it profoundly affected me.I have long loved Russian novelists and read all of the old Russian classics like “Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky and “War and Peace” by Tolstoy. There was a period of my younger life when that was about all I read. Now I have another beloved Russian novelist to look forward to and will be reading his book “Laurus” as soon as I can.Most highly recommended.This book was given to me by the publicist in return for an honest review.

[sarahlu82 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I usually like books that are a little bit different structurally, and this one definitely fit the bill. I enjoyed how the book’s organization reflected its content, with the format being more ambiguous at the beginning and again towards the end when the protagonist’s frame of mind was also kind of fuzzy. I don’t want to say too much about the plot, since this is one of those books where plot points being unveiled at the right time and as the author intended definitely matters. You will probably get more out of the book if you have some knowledge of 20th century Russian history, but I enjoyed it even without that.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The premise of this story is gradually revealed, so don’t read the following if you prefer not to know anything at all before reading this book.A Russian man born in 1900 is cryogenically frozen as a part of experiments carried out on prisoners in the Solovki labor camp during the Stalin era, and is then miraculously revived in 1999. He gradually remembers episodes in his life, and in giving us these in fragments, we piece together his story. It’s an effective technique from Vodolazkin, which also allows us to survey the events of 20th century Russia, some of which are horrifying, as if from a distance, like an aviator over the earth. The book touches on mortality, memories, and changes in the world over time, and not always in the way you might think. Little things, like smells and sounds, are more important to him than the ‘big things’ commonly recorded by history. In a set of very touching and powerful scenes, he finds that the love of his life is still alive, but just barely, and goes to see her. It’s moving, to say the least.The book was headed for an even higher rating from me, but lost some of its steam in part two, which I found wasn’t as effective, at least, until its ending, which is fantastic. The rest could have used tightening up, either in the use of multiple narrators, or some of the section which veer into either the banal, or into obscure aspects of the metaphysical.Frankly, it’s also hard to believe the view the protagonist forms, that “the proportional level of evil is approximately identical in all epochs”, and that if it’s not present in authoritarian rule, then it presents itself through anarchy and crime. “Authoritarianism may be a lesser evil than anarchy,” he says at one point, and “there is “no such thing as undeserved punishment,” at another. Huh? You could argue that he almost takes a god-like, enlightened view of man in arriving at these views, but to not recognize that there are intervals – such as Stalin’s Terror – which are maxima in the ebb and flow of man’s inhumanity to man, even if it is never close to zero – seems ludicrous, especially for someone who lived through it. I was wondering if he was being a teeny bit deferential to the current Russian leader here, and if that was also why he chose the last year of Yeltsin’s term as the time of the revival, getting in a few barbs at Yeltsin in the process. Regardless, it just does not seem honest to someone who lived through that period – the denunciations, the loss of freedom, the murder and torture.Still – a good book which I enjoyed reading, and will have to seek out more from this author.Quotes:On art, I took it as a metaphor for Russia, and perhaps mankind:“Construction lines are the foundation of the work. You haven’t perfected composition of form, it’s too early to move on to the light-and-shadow model.”On discourse in the modern world:“After he left, I watched television, what they call, using English, a talk show. Everybody interrupts each other. Their intonations are scrappy and rather unrefined; it’s unbearably vulgar. Are these really my new contemporaries?”On evil, I loved this one, which seems so appropriate to our own time:“Because of my father, I thought about the nature of historical calamities – revolutions, wars, and the like. Their primary horror is not in the shooting. And not even in famine. It is that the basest of human fervors are liberated. What is in a person that was previously suppressed by laws comes into the open. Because for many people only external laws exist. And they have no internal laws.”On independence:“It seems to me that accomplished people have a defining trait: they depend little on those around them. Independence, of course, is not the goal but it helps achieve the goal. There you are running through life with the weak hope of taking off and people are looking at you with pity, or, at best, with incomprehension. But you take off and from up high they all seem like dots. That’s not because they have instantly diminished but because the view from above (lectures on the basics of drawing) makes them into dots, into a hundred dot-faces oriented towards you. With open mouths, it would appear. And you’re flying in the direction you chose and tracing, in the ether, the figures that are dear to you. Those standing below delight in them (perhaps envying them a little bit) but lack the power to change anything because everything in those spheres depends solely on the flyer’s skill. On an aviator splendid in his solitude.”On memory:“It would be boring if recollections reflected life like a mirror. They only do that selectively, which brings them closer to art.”On old newsreels, and their relation to history:“It’s simply that, in some strange way, the black-and-white figures darting around the screen stopped corresponding to reality: they are only its faded signs. Just as petroglyphic drawings in caves – animals and little figures of people – are hilarious and remind one of real people and animals but say nothing about life back then. You look at them but the only thing that is clear is that bison were four-legged and people two-legged, essentially the same as now.”On Russia:“Anything is possible in Russia, uh-huh. There is condemnation in that, perhaps even a verdict. It feels as if it is some sort of disagreeable boundlessness, that everything will head in an all-too-obvious direction.”