Timur Valitov "Corner Room" - Moscow: AST, 2021

Another book from a past life that remains relevant today. It's also a story about loneliness: in the midst of the World Cup, the protagonist returns to his hometown to bury his father, reminiscing about the past, trying to make sense of the present, and discovering along the way that he never truly knew either his father or himself. This is a sad novel about how episodes from the distant past, contained within the space of a corner room (a very apt metaphor), can unlock a whole chain of traumatic memories. Valitov's protagonist faces the impossible task of navigating a relationship with a less-than-ideal world, and this process forms the book's core. The fact that the action unfolds simultaneously in the real and literary realms (the narrator is an aspiring writer), and the fact that both spaces are precarious and elusive, like a beautiful hallucination, adds to this core of reading pleasure.
"You need to wash, air out the room, change your underwear, although all this is useless: it won't help at all. This is what will help: to leave, to disappear, to leave not a trace, not a shadow."

