“Pavel Zhang and Other River Creatures” by Vera Bogdanova: The experience of fictional futurology

Abstract

   The article addresses the latest literary material – the novel “Pavel Zhang and Other River Creatures” by V. Bogdanova (2021) and studies its problems, the system of characters and the peculiarities of the style. We focus on the concept of fictional time, depicting the future destinies of Russia in the middle of the current century in the space of Eurasian civilization. The article analyzes the mythopoetic imagery of the work, which combines the elements of Chinese mythology with the neo-myths born of modernity and the individual imagination of the characters. We thoroughly study the artistic understanding of the origins and forms of manifestation of the characters’ personal and social traumas, which go back to ancestral memory, childhood impressions, experiences of intimate and family life, and are aggravated by the growing alienation of the individual from historical time. The author of the novel sees public life in a bizarre combination of rapid technological progress, the devaluation of the individual, the degradation of civil institutions and the strengthening of the neo-imperial state apparatus, which has achieved unlimited electronic control over people, including their physical condition. The novel searches for a new “hero of time” who is able not only to reflect on the pressure of the digital age, feeling like a victim, but also, at the cost of personal well-being, to offer ethics of resistance to its destructive impact.