Month: January 2026

Book: Sergey Nikolaevich “Status: Free. A Portrait of the Creative Emigration”

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Almost four years ago, Russia attacked Ukraine. Because of that, many families were forced to flee Ukraine to escape the war. But at the same time, inside Russia it suddenly became dangerous to condemn the war—and even to call it a war. And those who didn’t want to fall silent were forced either to go to prison or to leave, branded in their own country as traitors, “foreign agents,” and even terrorists. (Many Belarusians went through a similar path after the 2020 protests, but that isn’t really related to the book I’m talking about.)

Russian journalist Sergey Nikolaevich also left Russia after the war began. And then he decided to interview members of the creative intelligentsia—people whom their homeland no longer considers its own—and turn those conversations into a book. That’s how Status: Free. A Portrait of the Creative Emigration came to be.

Nikolaevich focuses specifically on people in creative professions. Among the subjects of his interviews are Kirill Serebrennikov, Renata Litvinova, Chulpan Khamatova, Maxim Galkin, and others.

Based on the blurb, I expected to hear conversations with those who left about how and why they had to go, what the main trigger was, what they’re doing now, and how they’re coping morally—when they’re both enemies to their own country and hated by many Ukrainians, for whom there are no “good Russians” right now.

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Book: German Shenderov, Sergey Tarasov “The Knówer: Bonds of Hell”

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The big discovery of last year for me was Ivan Belov’s Zastupa series; the third book came out just recently, and I’m going to read it as soon as it starts being sold in an ebook version. In my review I praised the first two books a lot, and someone wrote to me that in that case I absolutely had to read another one that came out in the same The Scariest Book series.

That was The Knówer: Bonds of Hell, co-authored by German Shenderov and Sergey Tarasov. Originally, German Shenderov had written only a short story, “Khryashchekhmyl,” which appeared in his short story collection back in 2022. But later he wrote two more stories about the same character, after which Sergey Tarasov joined the series, and together with Shenderov he finished the book—what has now become a novel in stories. And the original “Khryashchekhmyl” became only the first chapter of this book, changing its title to “Atonement.” And already as a novel, the book came out in 2025.

The recommendation—and then the blurb—won me over. The story is set mostly in 1965, in a small Belarusian village, where a local knówer lives and fights evil spirits. Folklore, and on Belarusian soil that’s native to me… I just couldn’t pass it by.

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Book: Boris Akunin “Bashō’s Frog”

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Boris Akunin has repeatedly experimented with the form of his prose, incorporating interactivity in one way or another. Sometimes it was limited to links to video clips that could be opened online by scanning a code from the book; other times it took the shape of full-fledged “quest books,” where the narrative depends on the reader’s choices.

I myself am quite conservative when it comes to reading, so I prefer a straightforward novel, without all these branching paths and detours. External links didn’t appeal to me either when I encountered them before. Still, I decided to give this kind of genre another chance and read Bashō’s Frog, knowing in advance that it is built precisely around choice.

There were several reasons for that:

  • I like Akunin’s work, but I have by no means read everything he has written.
  • This book is about Erast Fandorin, my favorite character created by the author.
  • The narrators are either the Georgian Lazo Chkhartishvili or the Jewish Aron Brazinsky. Both of these colorful peoples appeal to me greatly (especially the latter, since on my mother’s side I am Jewish myself).

The choice of narrators is far from accidental. They are the great-grandfathers of Boris Akunin himself (known in everyday life as Grigory Shalvovich Chkhartishvili). He chose to construct the narrative from their perspectives, imagining how representatives of these nations might tell a story, complete with both real and invented stereotypes.

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