The Key
Calligrapher
"Calligrapher" is a collection of stories in the genre of magical realism. Its characters are ordinary people whose lives are experiencing strange events. Magic and mysticism rule the book, but the characters, like good old acquaintances, are extremely realistic and close to the reader. The charm and paradoxes of the book are given by the relentlessly laconic language and the dizzying unpredictability of the plots.
Photo gallery
Reviews
Buy now
«{{ book.title }}»
- {{ detail }}
- Price: {{ book.price }} UAH.
The day before the opening of the international Book Arsenal Festival writer Evgen Ilyin presented his historico-fantasy novel about Kyiv, “The Key”, at the St. Cyril’s Church (Kyrylivska Church). The author believes that after a while his book will become so popular that excursions to the places where the events described in the novel occur would be taken in the capital. Similar to the way they take tourists around Paris or other cities where Dan Brown's novel “The Da Vinci Code” took place. And it would begin either at the St. Cyril’s Church (Kyrylivska Church), where the main character was baptised, or at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, where the first and main event of the novel takes place. Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, or rather a certain door in the lower caves, becomes an archway through time for the main character. By opening an old door with a key dropped by a woman beggar in the street, history student Denys finds himself in Kyiv a century ago, i.e. in 1917. It's not a new trick for novels and films, but it's all about who uses it and how. For Ilyin, it is an occasion to describe in detail what the city looked like at the time, when it was in fact an outback. The writer is utterly free of snobbish views. He does not consider Kyiv to be the centre of Europe, he describes the life of ordinary Kyivans without gloss. But he does it very vividly. You have pictures of the markets, streets, monuments and houses in front of your eyes.
Ilyin tells "Vesti" that he has been fascinated by the history of Kyiv for a long time, and for ten years he nurtured his idea of a novel about his favourite city, asking local historians for details that are always important in this kind of fiction. The pavements in the centre were covered with yellow paving stones to match the colour of the houses, on the pedestal near the Arsenalna Metro Station there used to be not a cannon but a monument to Poltava colonel Ivan Iskra and the general judge Vasyl Kochubey, who informed Peter I of Ivan Mazepa's betrayal. The book is full of the kind of details that are all the buzz. In his novel Ilyin vividly describes not only the events of 1917. He also touches on the Kureniv tragedy of 1961, of which very few people remember so far. An entire district was flooded by a mud flow, and there is still no accurate data on the real number of victims. The writer also describes a different sort of horror - a flood then washed away an entire cemetery, with coffins floating through Kurenivka and Syrets. Even when the consequences of the tragedy were eliminated, rescuers found them for some time on abandoned household plots. A spooky but memorable sketch. Perhaps so that readers do not perceive the fiction as a history textbook, the author warns that he has changed some historical facts - for the sake of the plot. That is, they took place at a different time from the one described in the novel. For example, the main character comes to work at a newspaper editorial office and shocks the editor-in-chief with predictions of the near future - Kyiv will be seized by the Bolsheviks, the battle near Kruty will be lost, and the officers of the Tsarist Army who refused to participate in the defence of the city will be shot. At first, the editor-in-chief and his staff take it as a joke nonsense. But the alien from the future calmly says that in a few minutes there will be a huge explosion in an ammunition depot in Zvirynets. And it really thunders, and such power, that glass flies out in a half of houses in Kyiv. However, in the novel it happened in the late autumn in 1917, but in reality it happened in April 1918. By the way, Zvirynets, an area around the Botanical Garden, is the area where the poorest Kyivans lived in shacks. Now it is the area of elite private residences. To make the novel more relevant in describing the life of the main character in present days, the author recalls the events on the Maidan. However, these are not far-fetched stories, necessary for the book to get more attention. He draws a parallel between two upheavals for Ukraine - the proclamation of the UNR in 1917 and the Revolution of Dignity. Ilyin tries to show that the revolution is made by romantics, but they are soon replaced by people of different mindset. That is why, in Ilyin's novel, a young girl dies of heart failure on the Maidan, and just as tragic are the deaths of students near Kruty. (Nikolay Milinevskiy, critic) .