Into the Thickening Fog by Andrey Gelasimov: book review

Into the Thickening Fog (2017) is set in winter in Far North Russia.

Eduard Filippov is a Russian theatre director, and a French theatre has agreed to stage his latest drama. This would be the most prestigious and lucrative offer of his career.

Reluctantly, Filippov travels back to his hometown in the Far North to tell his long-time collaborator and friend that the assignment does not include him. Filippov has been hired to do the assignment alone. Filippov needs to deliver the news to his friend in person to avoid upsetting him.

However, the travel back to his hometown is during one of the worst winters on record. Then the power cuts out and he is left in the bitter cold, freezing to death.

To survive, he takes to drinking vodka, and reminiscing about his past, his childhood, and his ambitions: ‘he suddenly saw his fifteen-year-old self trailing off to school in the wintry morning darkness and the impenetrable fog that blanketed the town for several months.’

He married his childhood sweetheart at 18, but a year after the wedding, Nina died. Initially, he wanted to die too, until the theatre saved him. The impenetrable fog of his youth is now enveloping him again, at 42 years of age: ‘The fog instantly thickened into the Demon of the Void. I’m coming to get you, the demon jeered.’ He thinks death can get him at any time.

Written like a stage play, in three Acts, it is not as dramatic and morbid as it sounds. It is witty and comical and cynical and full of demons.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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