The winners of the Russian "Big Book" literary awards were announced Tuesday by the Russian National Library.

The main prize went to Vladimir Makanin and his Chechen-war-themed novel "Asan." The novel's hero, major Zhilin (a nod to Leo Tolstoy's "Prisoner of the Caucasus") leads a long-term, down-to-earth business operation in war-torn Chechnya, providing fuel to both sides of the conflict and building a house for his family somewhere in faraway, safe Russia. It is quite likely that this nonflashy book will become, and for a long time remain, the main book about the recent wars in the Caucasus.

Yum.