Ilget is the story of a frail foundling who loses his twin brother, then by the will of mysterious supernatural forces goes from being a thrall under his adoptive father to the leader of a whole tribe. He finds himself enslaved once more when the Mongols invade the banks of his native Yenisei River, but ultimately comes to realize a truth: the greatest of blessings is to live without fear.
A Krasnoyarsk newspaper wrote of the novel, “The author works with myth like a skilled craftsman sculpting a dugout canoe from a cedar trunk: with powerful, deliberate movements he hollows out the wooden interior and decorates the structure that emerges with coarse writing in praise of nameless spirits. When you board this boat, first your curiosity will be sparked; then things might turn uncomfortable; and you begin to understand that you will either perish or make it to the far shore.” Even more ethnographic and exotic than Grigorenko’s first novel Mebet, Ilget is imbued with magical realism, based on Siberian folklore and mythology.
Published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia.
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Author
Alexander Grigorenko was born in Novocherkassk, south of Moscow, but has spent most of his life in the depths of Siberia. Since completing his studies at the Kemerovo University of Cinema and Photography, he has worked as a journalist for the East Siberian bureau of Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russian Newspaper). Mebet, also published by Glagoslav, is his highly-acclaimed debut novel, and the first installment of the trilogy, followed by Ilget and The Blind Man Lost His Fife which were published in 2013 and 2016 respectively. He is a finalist for the literary awards such as The Big Book (2012), NOS (2013), and Yasnaya Polyana (2015). For his third novel The Blind Man Lost His Fife, Grigorenko was awarded the prestigious Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award in 2016. He lives near the city of Krasnoyarsk.
Endorsements and Review Quotes
“Grigorenko’s previous book Mebet, set among the Nenets people of the Siberian taiga, was such an unique literary experience that one could be forgiven for opening Ilget, the next book in the trilogy (a rather loose trilogy, it would appear), with some trepidation, anxious that it repeat or at least not surprise in same measure. But if anything, Ilget is better; although-steeped in mythology and the supernatural, as the people it writes about were and are, it feels more rooted in reality and rather than being fully immersed in magic-realism, only dips its toes in it.” Peter Gordon, Asian Review of Books
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