Venushaar

A masterpiece of contemporary Russian literature

"Why did you apply for asylum?" This question is one he must translate into Russian multiple times a day. The nameless interpreter works for the Swiss immigration authority and hears countless stories of hardship every day, both real and fabricated. While translating the foreign suffering, his own life story wraps around the words like a second layer, as he too is an emigrant longing for those he no longer has around him: his wife and child. Shishkin narrates a century of Russian history and embeds the interpreter's life within a cosmos of global culture.