Writing the Urals: Permanence and Ephemerality in Ol'ga Slavnikova’s 2017

Abstract

Ol'ga Slavnikova’s novel 2017 (Vagrius, 2006) made her the second woman to win Russia’s coveted Booker Prize, garnering conflicting critical responses in the process. Many hurried to label the narrative a dystopia: 2017’s last hundred pages depict the centenary of the November ‘revolution’, chronicling how crowds commemorate the event by dressing up as Reds or Whites and slaughtering their enemies (Chantsev 287; Eliseeva 14). Other critics, and Slavnikova herself, see dystopia as only one strand in the work (Slavnikova ‘Mne ne terpitsia’, 18; Basinskii 13).