Asya Volodina "Protagonist" - M.: AST, 2022

It's hard to say whether Asya Volodina's book is more of a university novel or an ancient Greek tragedy. The former is suggested by the setting (the action takes place at the Academy, which could be modeled on several prestigious modern universities), while the latter is suggested by the composition, the epigraphs, and the young man's suicide on the very first pages, which, as the reader realizes by the last, was inevitable. Connected by an incident (and seemingly nothing else, but this is only an illusion), the novel's protagonists tell their stories in different voices, and the author weaves them into a mosaic of the world, so that each person recognizes not only their own traumas of varying severity, but also their purpose and the source of strength for its realization. Perhaps this is why the tense plot leads to a release not in the form of a declaration of chthony, but in the form of catharsis—a purification of the soul through empathy.  

"No matter, the kingdom became an empire, the empire became a union, the union became a federation, and the Third Rome survived, just as our Academy will survive."