Aleksandr Ilichevsky

"His is a voice so vibrant and confidant because he poses the so-called ‘ultimate’ existential questions time and time again, without stubbornness or sarcasm and without doubting his right to do so. He thus counteracts the trendy nonchalance of contemporary fiction and brings it back into the realm of literature."
NOVY MIR

"Young A. Ilichevsky’s novel "Ai-Petri" is seething with primary forces previously unknown in our literary works."
POLOSY

"Ilichevsky’s work represents a breakthrough in contemporary Russian prose, in terms of both content and form."
RUSSKY ZHURNAL

"His style is inventive and opulent, saturated almost to the point of transgressing into another dimension. Synonyms, exacting metaphors, quick changes between a variety of perspectives – all so compact that it takes your breath away. As if you were a child standing on a springboard, it gets to you to such an extent that you feel like you have already jumped and are flying with all the fear and fascination of flight, yet every new sentence is like another spiralling jump."
KNIZHNOE OBOZRENIE

"The name of this young writer Aleksandr Ilichevsky has lit up the literary skies like a supernova. With his bizarre, rich, prose which flows like crystal clear water he seems to consciously reflect the entire stylistic diversity of Russian literature from the last century."
ZNAMYA

Though his latest novel veers toward the enigma of love rather than the mysteries of math, Aleksandr Ilichevsky, a young mathematician and physicist, came to the attention of Russian critics with the publication in 2005 of a short novel called Butylka-Bottle (Nauka) that follows a mathematician through Cyprus after the collapse of the USSR. The protagonist must abandon his profession to make ends meet in any way he can, but his integrity and conscientious nature get in the way at a time when corruption invades all industries. In his latest novel, Ai-Petri (published electronically and to be published shortly in book form by Vremya), Ilichevsky writes of another young Muscovite, lovelorn and depressed, who begins an aimless journey through the Crimea. As he sets off on his wanderings, he intends to commit suicide, but the beauty of the natural world lightens his spirits and causes him to ruminate on his past rather than his death. While he contemplates his life, the memory of when he witnessed his best friend’s killing by a white sheepdog surfaces again and again, triggered by unusual reminders in the world around him. He thinks he hears his dead friend’s voice somewhere near him, and soon notices a girl of unusual beauty accompanied by a white sheepdog. After the young man befriends the girl, the dog attacks him, but the girl saves his life in a strange reversal of what had happened to his friend years before. The novel ends as the young girl inexplicably throws herself from the cabin of a funicular and falls to her death in the Ai-Petri mountains.
PUBLISHING TRENDS