Aleksandr Ilichevsky Матисс - Matiss Matisse Novel. Vremya Publishers, Moscow 2007, 439 pages RUSSIAN BOOKER PRIZE 2007 for MATISS Matisse follows a forlorn young man out into the streets Moscow in the chaos of the early 1990s as he becomes homeless in pursuit of personal freedom. Weary of his job and all too aware of the chaos rippling through Russian society, Mikhail Korolyev, a 37-year-old physicist sets off to live on the mean streets of the capital, searching for his own space in the world. Having befriended a woman with religious mania and a mentally challenged man, Korolyov roams the gutters of Moscow and later the vast expanses of southern Russia in search of something better. The book is full of less than glamorous features of everyday life -- unscrupulous cops, teenage gangs, a community of Vietnamese laborers, a psychiatric hospital located in a former church. But its meaning goes far beyond reflecting the everyday lives of Russia's poor. The novel grows into a metaphor for Russia as a homeless nation, groping in the dark, unable to find meaning in the new life as the old one ended. The title of the book alludes to the protagonist's wish to possess a painting like a "cube of airy space" by Henri Matisse.   Аи Петри - Ai-Petri Ai-Petri Novel. Emergency Exit, Moscow 2006, 250 pages A young man, distraught with unhappy love, leaves Moscow and departs to Crimea. Without money and shelter he’s wandering in Crimea, contemplating how early springtime is replaced by the summer. Initially his travel is a farewell to the world, because he prepares for suicide. But gradually the beauty of the nature, sunsets and sunrises above the sea change his mood. Events of the past begin to remind of themselves in a strange way. Years ago he became the witness of a murder — his friend had been killed by the dog of shepherds-mountaineers. It was a white Asian sheep-dog, and the tragedy happened because of a local girl of rare beauty. Now, in Crimea, on the night road the hero meets a person whose voice surprisingly reminds the voice of the lost friend. Shortly afterwards he notices a girl with a white Asian sheep-dog, and stealthily observes the girl and the dog by spyglass. The girl is extremely beautiful, but half of her face is spoiled by a burn. Having found a chance to get acquainted, he learns that recently her beloved man has got lost, the dog belonged to him. His sympathy to the girl and attempt to interfere in her fortune overshadows his own despair. The dog becomes a dangerous obstacle, it attacks the hero, when her tries to come closer to the girl. Rescuing him, the girl kills the dog. And then she leaps out from funicular cabin into the deep ravine under the Ai-Petri mountain, enclosing the coils of the destiny by her own death.   Нефт - Neft Oil Novel. Manuscript 1998, 180 pages In the beginning of 1990’s Moscow student is spending his vacation in the house of his grandmother in Baku, on the shore of Caspian sea. He is interested in his family story — Jews from Baku, and made inquires among his relatives about his great-grandfather, jeweler, who in the beginning of the World War I abandoned his family and went to America. He also inquires about his great-grand-mother, who married anew the commissar of 11th Red Army. But he finds an evident gap in all that historical descriptions, a family secret, which he tries to resolve. The reason for this family secret seems to be a longstanding quarrel of two branches of his family and is connected to his great-grand-father's, the jeweler’s inheritance: some treasure, one precious stone. Although he goes back to Moscow, the family strife and secret are chasing him. The elder brother — his alter ego – becomes a trickster, transmutes from ally into accomplice of the hostile branch of the family, and decoyes him in a trap in the basement, some type of a prison cell, where he is held captive. The relatives demand from him to recall the secret of the stone. He is aware that he knows nothing, but gradually with help of his dreams and visions he guesses about the secret. The stone must be a giant non-faceted diamond, the twin of the famous gem, which was gifted to the tsar of Russia by Persian shah. But the tsar received the twin, the authentic diamond disappeared on the path to Moscow and afterwards turn into the hands of the great-grand-father. The miraculous property of that stone was, that its fractions and threads arrange the map of Caspian sea oilfields.