Anthony Marra: ‘I am a disillusioned American’.

Anthony Marra gave an extremely interesting interview to Lena Papadimitriou for BHMAgazino magazine, on the occasion of the publication of his book The Tsar of Love and Children (translated by Achilleas Kyriakidis). A tsar is making his mark in Trump’s America. The novelist of the youngest American generation, obsessed with Russian and Chechen history, returns with his new book and explains to BHMAgazino why history is the most inventive storyteller.The interview was published on Sunday 29 January and you can read it below: Following the multi-award-winning Constellation of Vital Phenomena, perhaps the most significant prose writer of the newest American generation, who already has many fans around the world (including Sarah Jessica Parker), returns with the book *The Tsar of Love and Children* (published by Ikaros), in a masterful translation by Achilleas Kyriakidis. Without hiding his obsession with history, the 32-year-old Anthony Mara creates a sweeping, episodic novel or a collection of nine short stories that read as a single novel (whichever way you choose to interpret it), set against the backdrop of the Soviet Union, before and after its dissolution. Mara gathers snapshots of life, with protagonists whom historiography often attempts to erase: ordinary people. The first story, for example, is set in 1937, at the height of Stalin’s purges, featuring the painter-retoucher Roman Markin, who ‘erases’ faces with an airbrush on behalf of the propaganda department. In conversation with BHMAgazino, the American author who insists on delving into the Russian and Chechen universe speaks about Putin’s Russia, Trump’s America, and why history is the most inventive storyteller.It is more than obvious that you have an obsessive relationship with history. So, what are you, ultimately, a storyteller or a history nerd? ‘A wonderful question, but I don’t think it lends itself to a black-and-white answer. Above all, I’m a history nerd, and there is no more inventive storyteller than History itself.’ The US was largely unaware of Chechnya’s existence, at least until the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013. Your own interest in the region began as soon as you arrived to study in St Petersburg, just a few days after the murder of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who had exposed human rights abuses by Russian troops in Chechnya. Truly, were you not afraid to tackle such a sensitive international issue through fiction? ‘Literature has a duty to engage with complex and controversial issues. For readers who are fortunate enough to live in countries that enjoy peace, a novel is perhaps the closest they will ever get to places like Chechnya, Syria or Iraq. Readers are willing to travel anywhere in literature, provided the story is good enough. Asking readers to feel compassion for the victims of these conflicts and to identify with them seems even more crucial today, as Europe faces the refugee crisis. In a broader sense, I have focused my attention more on those about whom we learn the least: ordinary citizens. Although The Constellation of Vital Phenomena delves into the history of that specific region, the story of the war’s impact on ordinary people could, geographically speaking, have been set anywhere.”Did you discover anything paradoxical during your research into Russian and Chechen history? ‘Many paradoxes! The other day I was reading Arkady Ostrovsky’s book *The Invention of Russia: The Journey from Gorbachev’s Freedom to Putin’s War*. He writes that in the 1930s, workers in British shipyards found messages written in charcoal on imported timber. They came from prisoners in the Siberian gulags; these messages on the logs they were cutting were their only means of communication with the outside world. Ostrovsky devotes no more than a line or two to this in his book, yet an entire novel could spring from such a small moment. ‘Given that you have researched Russia and the Russian mindset in depth... how would you actually describe Putin’s Russia? Does it have any hope of becoming great again? ‘When I started writing about Russia nine years ago, I still harboured some hopes. The last decade has largely managed to extinguish them. The democratic reforms of the 1990s have been dismantled under the Putin regime. The rule of law no longer functions. Putin has turned the presidency into his own personal prison cell; he cannot escape, for fear of reprisals. I suspect he will rule Russia for the rest of his life. However, states are greater than their politicians. The same country that produced Putin has also produced ‘Pussy Riot’. Putin’s Russia will never be great, but the Russia of ‘Pussy Riot’ already is.’ How popular are you in Russia today? ‘My books have not been published in Russia, which is hardly surprising, given that they do not paint a particularly flattering picture of life under Putin’s regime. I have, of course, given lectures at a few universities and interviews to opposition newspapers, but I suspect that outside intellectual circles I am unknown.”The stories in your latest book—so distinct yet so inextricably linked—are set against the backdrop of the turbulent history of the Soviet Union before and after its dissolution. And yet, the reader gets the sense that your central canvas is human stories. Would you say that, for the most part, you write about those whom historiography struggles to erase? ‘Undoubtedly, that’s a lovely way of putting it. And, yes, that has been the aim of my work so far: to reconstruct those scattered stories that History has forgotten, ignored or erased.” Would you say that *The Tsar of Love and the Child* is a political book? ‘When you write about highly charged moments in history, you are not really in a position to avoid politics, so, in that sense, yes, it is. And both *The Constellation of Vital Phenomena* and *The Tsar of Love and the Child* focus on characters who are far from the sources of political power but close to its effects. Both books explore the ways in which politics can permeate and corrupt the personal sphere. Both are set in parts of the world where the price paid by those who oppose central authority is far higher than that borne by those who do the same in most Western countries. Neither, however, has its own political agenda.’ From the very first page of ‘The Tsar’, one gets a sense of science fiction. I think the final pages confirm this... ‘We tend to think of dystopias and apocalyptic future universes exclusively as products of science fiction. “Star Wars”, “The Hunger Games”, “Mad Max”, etc. And yet, for someone living in Grozny in 1999, the apocalypse has already arrived. For someone in Moscow in 1937, dystopia is everywhere. We don’t need to look to the stars or to the future. For many people, it is already here.’ Correct me if I’m wrong, but it is said that your involvement with the Russian world has now come to an end and that you are currently writing a novel set in Los Angeles and Italy. Would you really consider writing something about Greece? With the unprecedented economic crisis that nearly destabilised the whole of Europe and the waves of refugees, plenty of history is being written here. I assure you there are countless, semi-educated ordinary people... ‘One of the reasons I became involved with Chechnya was the absence of novels examining its modern history in the English language. This is not the case with Greece. You are right, there is no chapter in modern European history more dramatic and more urgent than that of Greece. However, Greece can boast a vibrant literary tradition, which is already producing the texts that will breathe life and meaning into this entire chapter of history. However, if anyone is willing to host me in your country, I would be truly delighted to begin my research.The book is, among other things, prophetic. I would remind you that one of your characters, Sergei, reads Donald Trump’s autobiography when he begins intensive English lessons. ‘It was purely coincidental. I wrote that particular passage long before Trump announced his presidential bid and I really had no idea what fate had in store for us. In that story, I tried to imagine what the ideal model would be for an aspiring hustler. In the category of ‘flashy, tasteless, gilded ass-kissing artists’, Donald Trump is king.Do you think there is a category of Americans ready to believe anything, even if it defies their common sense? Apart, of course, from the Tom Hanks fans you mention in the book... ‘Undoubtedly, I would put Donald Trump’s ardent fans at the top of the list. Anyone who bought one of his ridiculous red caps. It is disheartening how prone to delusion—however unrealistic, absurd and cruel it may be—many of my fellow countrymen prove to be. I grew up in Washington DC and the pizzeria in my neighbourhood is a place called ‘Comet Ping Pong’. My closest childhood friend was working there when, a few weeks ago, a madman turned up with an automatic weapon and opened fire (fortunately, without anyone being injured). What was the gunman’s motive? He had read a ‘fake news’ story claiming that Hillary Clinton was coordinating a satanic, cannibalistic child prostitution ring from inside that pizzeria (note: with ‘clients’ including senior members of her campaign team). And as if that weren’t terrifying enough, the national security adviser to the newly elected US President (note: Michael Flynn) had tweeted this conspiracy theory in recent months (note: according to which young children are being prostituted to Democrats). Now, the inmates are running the asylum.”What sort of American are you? “At the moment, a disheartened American. I have never been prouder to be an American than when Obama was elected, nor more ashamed than when Trump was elected. Obama’s track record, his belief in the possibility of hope and change, was confirmation that the hope I had for America was well-founded. The prejudice and stupidity of Donald Trump and all those he represents were nothing but the sad confirmation that my fear for America was also well-founded.’ In the introduction to her latest book, *Iron Curtain* , the naturalised Polish-American Anne Applebaum writes: ‘There have been regimes that sought absolute control not only over the organs of the state but over human nature itself.’ She concludes that we should today study in depth the ways in which totalitarianism operated in the past, since ‘we cannot be certain that mobile phones, the internet and satellite photographs will not end up as tools of control’. Do you agree? ‘The fundamental dangers of the “surveillance state”, which people like Edward Snowden have brought to light, were always projected into the future. Whatever one may hold against them, both George W. Bush and Barack Obama operated within the framework of democratic, liberal rules. There was never any great danger that either of them would engage in widespread spying or the systematic silencing of opposing voices. The real danger has always been the possibility that these powerful and privacy-invading technologies might fall into the hands of a completely unaccountable president, with no respect for or faith in the rule of law and institutions. For the past fifteen years, this possibility has been placed beyond the visible horizon, in the distant future. The problem with the future is that it always becomes the present.The rise of the far right in Europe and the rest of the world resembles a nightmarish echo of the 1930s. How, indeed, do you explain humanity’s almost inherent inability to learn from history? “It is a reasonable question that everyone is struggling to answer. One fairly strong argument I have read is that the last generation capable of recalling memories from the 1930s has passed away. In other words, there is no longer a living memory of where far-right, nationalist, populist demagoguery can lead. It is likely that those fortunate enough to have lived through the last seventy years of peace regard this as the status quo rather than an anomaly in European history, a fact that explains their tendency to act with less prudence. As for our inability to learn from history, I would say that we are capable of learning only what we are willing to hear.’ Ultimately, is *The Tsar of Love and Children* exclusively the product of historical research and imagination? Weren’t you tempted to weave in autobiographical elements? “Of course. There are quite a few small, autobiographical references. For example, the comments about Jim Carrey from ‘The Grozny Travel Agency’, I picked those up from a conversation I had with a Carrey fan in Chechnya. But also, quite a few of Alexei’s descriptions and experiences are my own genuine experiences, from the time I lived in Russia myself. As for my own doomed childhood dream of becoming an astronaut, it is the coda (ed.: the closing section in music) that brings ‘The Tsar’ to a close. Finally, the best lines in the book were first tried out in conversations between me and my parents or my girlfriend.” Could you describe a typical day for you? “I once heard a writer say that he only works when he’s inspired and makes sure he’s inspired from 9.00 to 5.00. That’s more or less what a typical day in my life looks like.”