There is only hope with us, the dead

Vladimir Kozlov on Yury Arabov's new novel Flagellants:

Until recently, Yury Arabov was primarily known to the general public as the screenwriter of several notable films by art-house director Alexander Sokurov, and, to a rather smaller audience, as a poet. In the past year, though, he gained visibility when NTV television broadcast two high-profile miniseries for which he wrote the scripts: adaptations of Nikolai Gogol's "Dead Souls" and Boris Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago."

Now, Arabov has published a novel, "Flagellants," which is a lament for the death of the Russian intelligentsia -- and, according to the author, a reflection of his own conflicted feelings about being an artist in present-day Russia.