Translating a novel (really, a collection of essays) about WWII massacres of Jews in Kyiv & the rise of neo-nazism in post-Soviet republics (and much in between). It will take me a few months, probably, since this is a side job.
Overall impression: the past is easier to deal with, because it is too horrible. Imagine 10^5 deaths. Although I unfortunately know the place where it happened, & he includes personal stories (more like tidbits), so the suspension of disbelief takes some effort to maintain. But the ‘present’ part—a series of the author’s open letters to mass-media and various officials about pogroms and suchlike that went unpunished—is hard: he keeps saying the same over and over. (Literally. And his style is heavy on the reader.) After a while the eye glazes over & notices only that the dates and the addresses change, but the content doesn’t, except for the growing list of people who had not answered.
Just had not answered.
Now this is—easy to imagine.
Maybe this isn’t odd, but I had thought it would be the other way around.
Among the listed people who provided medical help to the party and state leaders, there was an abrupt addition—V. V. Zakusov, professor of pharmacology. He didn’t take part directly in the leaders’ treatment—he was at first only called in for an opinion, and given to sign the conclusion about the prescriptions that the ‘doctors-murderers’ had issued to hasten their patients’ death. Vasili Vasilyevitch Zakusov took the feather and, well aware of what lied ahead, wrote this: “The best doctors in the world will sign such prescriptions.” In that moment he stopped being an expert and became a suspect. In jail, even after tortures, he didn’t withdraw his conclusion.
Translating a novel (really, a collection of essays) about WWII massacres of Jews in Kyiv & the rise of neo-nazism in post-Soviet republics (and much in between). It will take me a few months, probably, since this is a side job.
Overall impression: the past is easier to deal with, because it is too horrible. Imagine 10^5 deaths. Although I unfortunately know the place where it happened, & he includes personal stories (more like tidbits), so the suspension of disbelief takes some effort to maintain. But the ‘present’ part—a series of the author’s open letters to mass-media and various officials about pogroms and suchlike that went unpunished—is hard: he keeps saying the same over and over. (Literally. And his style is heavy on the reader.) After a while the eye glazes over & notices only that the dates and the addresses change, but the content doesn’t, except for the growing list of people who had not answered.
Just had not answered.
Now this is—easy to imagine.
Maybe this isn’t odd, but I had thought it would be the other way around.
″ A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic”—a meme
Ah, but what if you have walked above their bones?
You always walk over bones, it’s just that you know of some and don’t know of others.
I don’t know how you do it, but you seldom fail to cheer me up. Even a little bit.
Thanks.
From the book, on ‘The Doctors’ plot’ of 1953:
Among the listed people who provided medical help to the party and state leaders, there was an abrupt addition—V. V. Zakusov, professor of pharmacology. He didn’t take part directly in the leaders’ treatment—he was at first only called in for an opinion, and given to sign the conclusion about the prescriptions that the ‘doctors-murderers’ had issued to hasten their patients’ death. Vasili Vasilyevitch Zakusov took the feather and, well aware of what lied ahead, wrote this: “The best doctors in the world will sign such prescriptions.” In that moment he stopped being an expert and became a suspect. In jail, even after tortures, he didn’t withdraw his conclusion.