PARANOIA: A NOVEL
Book ID/图书代码： 09895012B56389
English Summary/英文概要： This dramatic story about impossible love, madness, and murder has become a stronger indictment of the totalitarian state than any political statement to come out of Belorussia to date.
The reaction from the authorities was quick, yet unprecedented: the novel by Victor Martinovich was banned in Belorussia right after its publication in the Russian language.
Paranoia tells the story of the writer Anatoly Nevinsky (the last name sounds like “innocent”), who gained an international reputation as author of sharp political satires against a modern police state. His denunciations of Muraviev, minister of the state security organization (the MGB, analogous to the Soviet KGB, with vaster powers of enforcement), and the country’s actual dictator, has put Nevinsky under close surveillance. Anatoly is aware that the secret service is watching his every step: whether the online publication of a story, an exchange of emails with his German agent, or a visit to a coffee shop for a cup of green tea. The secret service watches Anatoly as he first meets Liza Supranovich, a local girl enjoying a latte macchiato in his favorite coffee place. Their romance develops swiftly into a relationship, and the couple rents a flat where they continue to meet.
Anatoly and Liza fear they are being followed, and though this paranoia often becomes the occasion of jokes, the reader knows better: the second part of the novel is written as a decoding of the time the couple has spent together in their bugged love-nest, with commentary on the lovers’ every word and sound. In the decoded recordings, the lovers are referred to as “Gogol” (Anatoly) and the Fox (Liza).
Anatoly is so smitten with the girl that he chooses to ignore certain suspicious things about Liza: a recent graduate, and an orphan with no close family in the state elite, she owns a number of flats, a luxuriously furnished country house, and several expensive sports cars. Officers of the traffic police salute as she speeds by. Liza confesses the source of her privileges: she is the mistress of the omnipotent minister Muraviev. What’s more, as a smart French literature major, Liza appreciates Muraviev’s sophistication, eloquence, and even his artful performance on the piano. Anatoly fears lest Liza’s love for him might just be the reverse side of her feelings towards the state dictator. This ménage a trois drama takes off as true dystopian noir when Liza admits she is expecting a child and that Muraviev may be the father. Soon, Liza disappears and is reported to have been murdered. Anatoly is the only suspect.
The young intellectuals weave their love story with remarkable brilliance of style. Yet when the ghost of paranoia takes on flesh and blood, their carefully concocted world turns into Kafka’s Castle – trapping the protagonists in its deadly consequences.
Chinese Summary/中文概要：
Awards/获奖情况：“In his novel, [Martinovich] renews some of the major themes of classic Eastern European dissident literature. The system is not simply the rulers; it is also the ruled. Self-policing is more important than policing. Lovers betray each other wittingly or unwittingly. We all betray ourselves in the end. In the character of Anatoly, Martinovich portrays a writer who, while criticizing the aesthetics of totalitarianism, is drawn toward its power.
<…> Anatoly encounters the state in the attractive medium of a young woman’s body”. – NYRB, October 28th, 2010
“Absurdity, appropriately jittery language, the Minsk setting, humor, and odd details, such as Anatoly’s Rasta friend with his useful connections, give Paranoia special appeal, and Martinovich’s observations often show real humor”. – Lizok’s Bookshelf (lizoksbooks.blogspot.com/2011/02/modern-minsk-martinovichs-paranoia.html)
“Paranoia is a novel about love in a time of dictatorship. The love between a man and a woman is described with freshness, depth, and joy. In the background is the dark, sinister world of authoritarian rule, with its frozen emotions, unspoken truths, and bizarre understanding of reality– so entrenched in people’s heads that they are unsure which thoughts and fears are their own, and which are implanted in their minds by an insidious, overbearing power.” – Transitions Online
About the Author/作者介绍： VICTOR MARTINOVICH (1977), born in Oshmiany, Belorussia, is a political scientist, doctor of art history, and professor of the State European University in Vilnius. He is the author of four novels, two of them as yet unpublished.
Paranoia, published in Russia at the end of 2009, was pulled from sale in Belorussia two days after it hit the bookshelves. Diane Nemec Ignashev received a 2011 PEN Translation Fund grant for her translation of the novel, which will be published in English by Northwestern University Press at the end of 2012.
An excerpt from the novel appeared in Epiphany, New York, in February 2012. Victor Martinovich’s story Taboo was selected for the Best European Fiction 2011 anthology (Dalkey Archive).
The first novel by Victor Martinovich written in the Belorussian language was longlisted for the so-called Belorussian Booker Prize (named after Jerzy Giedroyc), and became the finalist of the Bogdanovich Literary Award.
Victor Martinovich has just completed a new novel, Sfagnum, a comic gangster novel set in the Belorussian countryside.
Format:电子手稿
Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE
Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE
Sales in other countries/其他国家销售情况：
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