A Volga Tale

The tumults of the Russian Revolution are recounted in Yakhina’s laborious epic of a German-speaking Soviet republic (after Zuleikha). In the 1910s, schoolteacher Jakob Bach is a citizen of Gnadenthal, a colony of German immigrants who have settled on the Volga River in Russia. His quiet life is forever altered when he’s summoned by rich, reclusive landowner Udo Grimm to teach Udo’s sheltered 17-year-old daughter, Klara. During private lessons in which Klara is concealed behind a curtain according to Udo’s dictates, student and teacher fall in love. Klara then runs away from her family to be with Jakob, but the couple’s scandalous relationship isn’t accepted by the Gnadenthalers. The two retreat to the forest, where Jakob and Klara learn to live off the land and bear witness to starvation, war, and the Communist takeover. Yakhina uses Jakob as a Forrest Gump figure, a sensitive observer of the phases of the revolution, from bodies of mass casualties floating in the Volga to the earnest attempts of a minor Communist Party functionary to create a new ideology for Soviet citizens. Unfortunately, the action stalls halfway through after Jakob and Klara face a tragic event, and the narrative seems intended mainly to serve as a vehicle for historical information. As fiction, this comes up short. (Sept.)