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Madina Amagova, head of the culture department of the Russian Congress of the Caucasus Peoples
We present the book by Alice Ganiyeva – “The Holiday Mountain.”
It is her second book, which has already become popular and provoked a lot of reviews and criticism.
Alice began as a literary reviewer.
Her first novella “Salam to you, Dalgat!” was written under the pen-name of Gulla Khirachev.
When the novella received the prestigious award “Debut 2009”,
nobody knew that the author was a young, beautiful girl with the fairytale name Alice.
And only at the awards ceremony did everybody find out that there was no Gulla Khirachev,
there was Alice Ganiyeva.
Alice Gamiyeva, writer, literary reviewer
The second book is not a collection of stories.
“Salam to you, Dalgat!” was a collection of small texts, novellas, stories, essays about Dagestan;
but this book is a novel about a hypothetical prospect
– the Caucasus if it were to be separated from Russia by a wall.
There are many characters, and they started to find themselves in the situation.
It describes various fates, personal lives.
I play with the language.
The dialogues are in various languages, as in the first book, including Dagestani slang.
Probably, some of you are acquainted with such an interesting linguistic phenomenon.
There is a small parody of socialist novels, socialist realism novels.
It is styled as a fairytale about a lost Caucasian mountain village with a folklore lifestyle.
Some people reacted to my book negatively; most of them are from Dagestan.
They didn’t like the fact that I presented Dagestan to the whole of Russia, and not only Russia.
“Salam to you, Dalgat!” was translated into several European languages.
This book will be published in Germany this year.
The Germans are very interested in the Caucasus and our people, our phenomenon of a unique culture.
Any independent culture which still hasn’t been destroyed by globalism is interesting in the modern world,
because there are few of them left.
It is a pleasure for me that, despite all these things, there are still people who read and discuss books.
Probably they haven’t read my book, but they discuss it.
The fact there are paraliterary discussions is very important.
Because discussions of a text often turn into discussions of significant processes in our life.
As for the Caucasus, these processes are very serious, important, and it is difficult to avoid acuteness.
Some reviewers accused me of striving for populist acuteness, a couple of reviewers think so.
In fact, when you write about Dagestan, you cannot avoid some acute moments.
Even if you try, you will have to speak about the struggle between various kinds of Islam,
for instance – extremist or traditional or some other forms.
You face acute themes all the time and cannot avoid them,
otherwise you will get a sweet love story without any traces of time or place.
Unfortunately, many authors - maybe some of you write - make a very common mistake
– authors who live in the Caucasus don’t want to notice, see, register the developments
which happen around us, and they write about vague common themes
which become dull repetitions of global plots.
Last autumn, in 2012, my second book was published by “AST.”
This is my first novel, it is called “The Holiday Mountain.”
It describes the hypothetical separation of the Caucasus from Russia.
This scenario is being discussed by everybody today:
from liberals to nationalists, from ordinary people to philosophers and politicians.
For me, the scenario is a writer’s technique.
I am far from politics.
I tell about life, reconsidering it and trying to gain new senses
so every reader will interpret my text differently, ambiguously.
The novel is not about politics and even not about separation,
but small fates of many people.
I hope that this book will be interesting to absolutely anyone,
including those who don’t live in the Caucasus and have never been there
and who are interested in looking at small unique cultures in the modern world,
which have found themselves at the crossroads of various globalizations
– Western globalization in a cheap and primitive sense and Eastern globalization -
as shallow forms of Islam.
Thus, I look forward to feedback from my readers, who are always very active –
they write letters to me, comment, disagree, criticize.
But, as I am a reviewer myself, criticism is welcome.