Lines of Fate

Written 10 years ago but not published until 1992, in Russia, this novel, which subsequently won the Russian Booker Prize, is a distinct oddity. It is written at several levels. On one, a vaguely contemporary Russian graduate student, Anton Lizavin, is seen pursuing the life and works of an eccentric, provincial-and wholly imaginary-writer who lived at the turn of the century, a man called Simeon Milashevich. On another are various surrealistic events, in past and present, that sometimes seem linked and often do not. And at a third, student and subject communicate in dialogue that is evasive, poignant, occasionally poetic and sometimes coy (""Maybe somebody is inventing both of us right now. Don't you have that suspicion from time to time?""). It's difficult to know what a non-Russian reader will make of much of the book, which is full of intense self-consciousness, with verbal horseplay and abrupt transitions between viewpoints and periods, even between prose and verse. It must have been appallingly difficult to translate, and frequent footnotes are still required to elucidate fine points. In short, the novel probably will be a struggle for all but very adventurous readers, though there is no denying the author's extraordinary imagination and versatility with language. (Apr.)