A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

I shamefully admit that I knew hardly anything about Chechnya. I knew it was a country close to Russia, and I knew there had been a war there. I didn't know about the persecution and absolute atrocities the people had to endure.

This book is a marvel. It made me laugh out loud and sob like a baby. It is both harrowing and hopeful. It is a beautiful story that is bound to stay with me for a long time. There are books you read for entertainment and to escape. Then there are books that matter. This book matters.

“On the morning after the Feds burned down her house and took her father, Havaa woke from dreams of sea anemones”

Set during the Chechen conflict the book follows 8 year old Havaa who, after her father is “disappeared”, is whisked away by her neighbour Akhmed to a crumbling hospital where she meets the grim surgeon Sonja.

A host of other characters float in an ever connected periphery — but all this is just the book jacket synopsis covering the who, what, where. I won't say it's irrelevant, but these are just the facts of the story. It's the writing that's the star here. Anthony Marra hadn't reached 30 when he wrote this, his first novel, and it's incredible. There are entire paragraphs that just fucking devastated me.

These characters are defined by what they have lost, the people that have disappeared from their lives. “As a web is no more than holes woven together, they were bonded by what was no longer there.”

Just some incredible writing throughout.