Summary:
Anthony Marra’s debut novel (published in 2013) is set in
Chechnya, the rebellious Caucasus republic that broke away from Russia in 1994,
was in short order mired in two wars thereafter, and ultimately lost its
independence and was re-incorporated into Russia as a semi-autonomous “federal
subject” state. Marra does not ease us
into his story, but propels us headlong into it; it is 2004, and eight-year-old
Havaa awakens to find that her father Dokka, suspected of aiding Chechen
rebels, has been taken away by Russian troops, who have also burned her house
to the ground. She is alive only because
Akhmed, her neighbor and her father’s friend, has spirited her out of her house
in the middle of the night and hidden her in his. Akhmed takes it upon himself to protect
Havaa; he knows that the soldiers will be looking for her, because even though the
official wars are over, Chechnya remains in the midst of a brutal battle for
control, and the policy of the state is to “disappear” not only those it
perceives as its enemies, but also their family members.
Akhmed manages to get Havaa to the abandoned local hospital,
where he believes she will be safe. The
hospital is staffed only by a smart, tough, and competent surgeon named Sonja, assisted
by a nurse. Sonja is an ethnic Russian
from the area who trained in London and then returned to her homeland. She agrees to shelter Havaa on the condition
that Akhmed, who trained as a doctor but is painfully aware of his inadequacies
in that profession (he wanted to be an artist), stay on also as her assistant
surgeon. Soldiers and civilians on both
sides arrive in need of care in a hospital barely functioning, with little in
the way of staff or supplies.
Sonja meanwhile is searching for her sister who has
disappeared into the chaos of the Chechen wars; she believes that Natasha is
alive, but hasn’t heard of her, or from her, in years (we will, in the course
of the novel, hear Natasha’s story and learn of another side of the underbelly
of this war). She comes to believe that
Akhmed may hold a key to Natasha’s whereabouts, and Sonja of course holds the
key to whatever measure of safety exists for Havaa—and thus for Akhmed as well. Other locals, a local Chechen historian, his
turncoat son, and various governmental and non-governmental functionaries round
out the cast in the novel. Akhmed must negotiate in a world where anyone
could be an informer, and one person clearly is; where the price for falling
into the wrong hands could be death or worse; where federal troops and rebels
vie to outdo each other in brutality; and where the rest of the population
spends every waking minute simply trying to survive in a lawless society and a
landscape gutted by ongoing strife. When
the various narrative arcs ultimately link up the ending is a powerful one.
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