Gessen, Masha - The Memory Keeper (New Yorker, 26 Oct 2015)
Gessen, Masha - The Memory Keeper (New Yorker, 26 Oct 2015)
Gessen, Masha - The Memory Keeper (New Yorker, 26 Oct 2015)
of books on the table to show that she through the voices of ordinary individ- and is probably the most Soviet of the
understood. Germans were protesting uals. This is oral history stripped down fteen post-Soviet countries, with a
a trade agreement between the United to segments so raw that it can stretch largely state-controlled economy and
States and the European Union, and both credulity and the readers tolerance stringent restrictions on free speech and
the center of the city was closed to traffic. for pain. At the beginning of Voices assembly. For a long time, Alexievichs
books were brought into Belarus from Rus-
You have to make people descend into the depths of themselves, Alexievich says. sia and sold on the black market. In recent
36 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 26, 2015 ILLUSTRATION BY THOMAS FUCHS
years, as Lukashenko has attempted to poetry and plays and screenplays, but
improve relations with the West, her books kept looking, as she puts it, to create a
have been allowed in stores. new text. She drew inspiration from
Alexievich has lived most of her adult her mentor, the Belarusian writer Ales
life in a small apartmenttwo rooms Adamovich, whose genre was oral his-
and a kitchenin a ten-story Soviet-era tory, but she had less patience for au-
apartment block in central Minsk, the thorial intrusions than Adamovich did.
capital. Her parents are dead, and her His best-remembered work, The Book
daughterwho is, in fact, the daugh- of the Siege, written with Daniil Gra-
ter of her late sister, whom she adopted nin, a fellow Soviet-era liberal, is a peo-
when the girl was fourteaches at a ples history of the siege of Leningrad,
trade school in Minsk and is raising her from 1941 to 1944. There is this story
own daughter. A longtime companion of a boy and his mother, who share an
lives in the apartment next door. apartment with a woman who steals,
In recent years, Alexievich has been Alexievich told me. The boy and his
looking for a bigger apartment, but she mother are starving to death. As Alex-
is reluctant to give up the bright light ievich recalled, the boy knows that the
and the view of the Svisloch River, and womans stash includes half a meatball,
hopes to get a place in the same build- and he struggles over whether to take
ing, with windows facing the same di- it. And suddenly there are three pages
rection. The thought of moving lls her of ruminations on the nature of the
with dread. The prize moneya little Russian intelligentsia. The thing I al-
less than a million dollarswill not help, ways say is Dont put yourself next to
she told me, because she cannot dele- the meatball. Youll lose.
gate the renovations: she cannot nd Alexievich wanted to dispense with
anyone in Minsk whose taste matches the authors voice and with the usual
hers. She likes solid shapes, simple lines, chronologies and contexts. She wanted
and no clutter. to approximate the voices she heard in
her childhood, when village women