ИСТИНА

Программа конференции: http://www.aatseel.org/program/past_conferences/2013-aatseel-conference-program/ When asked to translate Paranoia, I knew nothing about the novel, its author, or the context in which the author worked. Embarrassed to acknowledge this, I don’t think I’m alone. Even among Slavists “Belarusian culture” still evokes images of cross-stitched linen, folk-inspired lyric poetry, pogroms,horrifying tales of the sacrifices of Soviet partisans during World War II, and, more recently, the talking head of a dictator who makes Vladimir Putin seem like an intelligent, nice guy. Victor Martinovich’s novel introduced me to a cultural and literary scene that, while conflicted and complex, is also vital, smart, and resilient. Journalist Martinovich’s first attempt at fiction, Paranoia is “not the novel of the century” (http://www.textexpert.ru/node/1415). Its sentences run unjustifiably long, the author’s bizarre metaphors often ring too self-conscious, and the resemblance between the author and his very sympathetic writerhero rings too earnest. To his credit, though, Martinovich spins a compelling love story worthy of Erich Segal, interwoven with a detective tale of corrupt officials and secret police no less diabolical than Martin Cruz Smith’s, and set against an astonishingly beautiful twenty-first-century Minsk qua Dostoevsky’s Petersburg, with homage to Orwell, Olesha, Borges, and Nabokov. In my paper I hope to present an overview of the novel and to address the questions it raises, as a Belarusian novel written in Russian, about the reaches and limits of Russophone culture.