★ Winner of the 2023 BIG BOOK AWARD – Russia’s most prestigious literary prize (announced 5 December 2023).
★ From Yevgeny Vodolazkin – internationally acclaimed “encyclopaedic novelist” whose books have sold to 30+ countries.
★ A spellbinding story about a man cursed with perfect memory who must learn to forget; history and the individual stand on equal footing, reality and hallucination intertwine.
★ Continues the author’s trademark meditation on memory, time and history – a literary answer to today’s collective amnesia.
★ Genre-blend: diary essays, epistolary romance, spy thriller, love story – all in one narrative prism.

Isidore Chagin came to Leningrad from Irkutsk in the mid-1960s. As an outstanding graduate of the Leningrad Institute, he was famous for his amazing memory—he could accurately reproduce texts, spoken voices, and images at any time. This ability made him noticed by the KGB and work for it.

Chagin could remember texts of any complexity and store them in his memory. But this extraordinary ability also became a difficult test in Chagin’s life, because he was deprived of the ability to enjoy the simplest human happiness—that is, to forget. For him, everything he encountered became unforgettable. Chagin’s life “failed” from the beginning: he betrayed someone (as part of his mission), lost his beloved Vera because of this, and his only wish was to forget.

This book is a combination of diary essays, spy adventure literature, letter romances, and love stories. The author provides a very interesting way to trace Isidore Chagin’s life: Chagin’s story is not only told in his diary but also by people who knew him at different stages of his life—a talented young man, a decent “noble husband”, a smart and gifted artist, a romantic lover... All these are related to him. Every storyteller brings their own story and spirit into the narrative and highlights Chagin’s image from all directions. We will learn about Isidore Chagin’s life through 4 main storylines.

In the first part, we will see Chagin through the eyes of Pavel, a young archivist. At work, Pavel is instructed to analyze Chagin’s archives and study the diaries he left behind. These dusty archives and diaries become the stage for a real life drama, and a legendary life erased by time begins to unfold...
In the second part, Nikolai Ivanovich, Chagin’s colleague (the person who made the young Chagin make a major mistake and seriously ruin his life), tells the story of Chagin’s adventure in performing tasks abroad and fragments of his treatment in a mental hospital.
In the third part, from the mouth of Chagin’s artist friend Edward Grigorenko, we see a highly talented artist.
Finally, in the fourth part, the story returns to Pavel the archivist. Here, the ending of Chagin’s life will appear before us. The end of the book is clarified in the letters between Pavel and his beloved girl Nika (who once lived near Chagin and witnessed the last few months of his life). They entered Chagin’s life in different ways and were very grateful for Chagin’s appearance in their lives.

Every great gift violates harmony. For memory, forgetting is necessary—just as silence is necessary for language and reality is necessary for fantasy. In life, they are interconnected and indispensable, just like the tragedy and comedy that are always closely connected in Yevgeny Vodolazkin’s novels. This is no exception for the work “Chagin”.
Life is a gift from heaven. It is given to different people under different conditions to fulfill different missions. When it is given to a person with the deepest thoughts in an era, it is a double gift. Life comes and will pass. People are afraid of death when they are alive, but this fear is not harmful to people; on the contrary, it is the most dynamic emotion, prompting people to better appreciate what they have, know how to cherish what they have, and live a good life.

Yevgeny Vodolazkin

One of the most influential writers in contemporary Russian literary circles, a winner of many important literary awards at home and abroad. His works have been authorized for publication in more than 30 countries and are praised by critics as “encyclopedic scholar-novelists”!

He was born in Kyiv in 1964. After graduating from Kyiv University in 1986, he was admitted to the Department of Old Russian Literature of the Institute of Russian Literature of the USSR Academy of Sciences and studied under the famous Russian cultural master Dmitry Likhachev. Since 1990, he has worked in the Department of Old Russian Literature at the Pushkin House (i.e., the Institute of Russian Literature in St. Petersburg) and has been the editor-in-chief of the annual “Word and Tradition” of the Pushkin House since 2012. He has written a large number of academic books and articles and has been awarded research fellow and lecturer positions by the Topfer Foundation and the Humboldt Foundation.

As a famous contemporary Russian writer, Doctor of Philology, and expert in Old Russian literature and culture research at the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yevgeny Vodolazkin's main research fields focus on medieval literature and the study of historical narrative concepts in ancient documents.

Vodolazkin began his literary creation in his thirties. He is good at using literary creation as a weapon to write about history and fight tenaciously against the worldwide “historical amnesia” today, connecting the past and the present for mutual reflection. In 2010, his first novel “Solovyov and Larionov” was nominated for the Big Book Award and shortlisted for the Andrei Bely Prize. His second novel “Lavr” won the Big Book Award and the Yasnaya Polyana Award in 2013! It was named one of the top ten best literary books about God in the world by “The Guardian”! It has been authorized for publication in more than 30 countries! It won the first place in the 2013 Big Book Award and the third place in the Reader's Choice Award! It was shortlisted for the final list of the 2013 Russian Booker Prize! It was nominated for the 2013 New Literature Award! In 2015, he won the Serbian “Milovan Vidaković” Award, and in 2016, he won the Italo-Russian Gorky (Sorrento) Award! His work “The Hibernated Pilot” has been authorized for publication in nearly 15 countries! It was shortlisted for the shortlist of the Russian Big Book Award and the Booker Prize! It became a topic of discussion in South Korea, and he was invited to attend the “2021 Seoul International Writers’ Festival”! In 2022, he was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award! His work “The World Without Time: Brisbane” was authorized for multi-language publication before it was published! “The Apology of the Island" was shortlisted for the shortlist of the Big Book Award—one of Russia’s most prestigious literary awards in 2021! His new book “Chagin’s Life” even won the Gold Award of the Big Book Award—a major Russian literary award in 2023!

【Media Comments】
“Time is an important character in all of Yevgeny Vodolazkin’s novels. In ‘Lavr’, it is indispensable...; in ‘The Pilot’, time flows like water in two directions; in ‘The Apology of the Island’, time is so unconventional and runs through the whole text...” —Galina Yuzefovich

“Although it is impossible to predict whether his works will be re-read in 10-20 years, he definitely has his own position in the field of Russian literature” —Alexey Balakin

“After achieving unprecedented success, every novel by Yevgeny Vodolazkin is read with eager anticipation and respectful attention. The author is mastering a new genre field, diversifying his style, and creating a protagonist different from previous characters.” —Olga Timofeeva

“Candor and sincerity are the common characteristics of the protagonists in Vodolazkin’s works. They are not prophets, but carriers of certain knowledge slowly revealed by time, and time is the generator of internal discovery.”
——Maria Bashmakova