#dyachenko

[cajodvelebilja]

sasha samokhina.

[sejanus-plinth]

Farit Kozhennikov | Character Study (the vita nostra series)

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ↳ “ It is impossible to live in the world where I do not exist,” he said after a short pause. “Although it’s hard to resign oneself to my existence, I understand that. ��

| Vita Nostra - Marina & Sergey Dyachenko

[unhavoc]

An interview with Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, you can read it here

[pasdetrois]

Marina Dyachenko and Sergey Dyachenko, Vita Nostra (tr. Julia Meitov Hersey) • Mircea Suciu, Camouflage (2) • Agostino Arrivabene, Immutatio • Matthias Claudius, "Der Tod und Das Mädchen" • Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare • Dragan Bibin, Pull (edited) • Maria Kreyn, Angel's Back • Franz Wimmer, Death and the Maiden • Mel Chin, Bat and Dove • Ana Sanchez, Death and the Maiden

[bones-clouds]

books i read in 2024:

“vita nostra”

maryna & serhiy dyachenko

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

genre: dark academia, magical realism

synopsis:

The definitive English language translation of the internationally bestselling Ukrainian novel—a brilliant dark fantasy with "the potential to be a modern classic" (Lev Grossman), combining psychological suspense, enchantment, and terror that makes us consider human existence in a fresh and provocative way.

Our life is brief . . .

While vacationing at the beach with her mother, Sasha Samokhina meets the mysterious Farit Kozhennikov under the most peculiar circumstances. The teenage girl is powerless to refuse when this strange and unusual man with an air of the sinister directs her to perform a task with potentially scandalous consequences. He rewards her effort with a strange golden coin.

As the days progress, Sasha carries out other acts for which she receives more coins from Kozhennikov. As summer ends, her domineering mentor directs her to move to a remote village and use her gold to enter the Institute of Special Technologies. Though she does not want to go to this unknown town or school, she also feels it’s the only place she should be. Against her mother’s wishes, Sasha leaves behind all that is familiar and begins her education.

As she quickly discovers, the institute’s "special technologies" are unlike anything she has ever encountered. The books are impossible to read, the lessons obscure to the point of maddening, and the work refuses memorization. Using terror and coercion to keep the students in line, the school does not punish them for their transgressions and failures; instead, their families pay a terrible price. Yet despite her fear, Sasha undergoes changes that defy the dictates of matter and time; experiences which are nothing she has ever dreamed of . . . and suddenly all she could ever want.

A complex blend of adventure, magic, science, and philosophy that probes the mysteries of existence, filtered through a distinct Russian sensibility, this astonishing work of speculative fiction—brilliantly translated by Julia Meitov Hersey—is reminiscent of modern classics such as Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, Max Barry’s Lexicon, and Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale, but will transport them to a place far beyond those fantastical worlds.

[no-where-new-hero]

every so often i think about farit kozhennikov telling everyone "i never ask for the impossible" and go a little batshit again

[pensivegladiola]

Magic 101:

Still waiting on your letter? Check out these schools in the meantime…

[pathos-bathos]

Book reccomendations in the academic spirit

[turning-pages-seeking-sages]

“To live is to be vulnerable. A thin membrane of a soap bubble separates one from impenetrable hell. Ice on the road. The unlucky division of an aging cell. A child picks up a pill from the floor. Words stick to each other, line up, obedient to the great harmony of speech...”

- Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, Vita Nostra

[catchawishing-star]

The next time she came home, everything would be different. A new life, a new childhood would begin.

Marina & Sergey Dyachenko, Vita Nostra

[seab]

What is so important about being human? Is it because you simply haven’t experienced anything else?

Marina & Sergey Dyachenko, Vita Nostra

[cajodvelebilja]

assassin of reality is such an uneccessary sequel. you're telling me, sasha samokhina, a verb in the imperative mood, password, acts the same way she did when she was 16??

[sejanus-plinth]

Alexandra “Sasha” Samokhina | Character Study (the vita nostra series)

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ↳ “ Sasha realized with all her core being something that many understood before her: The creature did not care that Sasha was loved by someone. And that she loved someone herself. And that she had had a childhood, and she had splashed on the seashore; and that she had an old knit sweater with a reindeer embroidered on the front. There were plenty of people loved by someone, the ones who carried a seashell, a button, or a black-and-white photograph in their pockets. But no one had ever been saved by memories, no one had been protected by words and pledges, and those loved greatly by others died too. ”

| Vita Nostra - Marina & Sergey Dyachenko

[sailermoon]

great start to this book

[pasdetrois]

The Finnish concept of torppa is a land plot with outbuildings that is rented out by the owner. More deeply, according to M. Vasmer, the word ‘torppa’ comes from the Lithuanian tárpas - ‘about the gap’ and tãrp - ‘between’. This semantics refers to the collision of the in-between, the liminality that marks Torpa in the fate of Sasha Samokhina: her transformation at the Institute of Special Technologies divides the girl's life into ‘before’ and ‘after’. [...] Even before Sasha arrives there, the city is mystified: ‘They found Torpa in a road atlas. A transparent circle on the map, exactly where the sheet had frayed at the fold’. [...]

The structure of the city reveals the centre relatively late: the heroine enters the city centre only before her first departure home, although she sees the central square on a postcard literally upon arrival: ‘Among the cards on the counter, Sasha chose one - ‘In memory of ancient Torpa’. The card depicted a square with a fountain in which swans swam’. Nevertheless, the square as the centre, the heart of the city, does not function in the novel; the impression of Torpa's linearity is deepened by the above quote (the city as a sentence, i.e., a linear structure). The city centre, according to T. Sławek, is the embodiment of power - religious, legal, financial - so Torpa's centrality becomes a regularity, as real power remains above the empirical level of reality. The narrative absence of the centre is superimposed on pedestrian practices in a slightly different way: R. Barthes defines the city centre as a universal point of reference, a coordinate concept: ‘the place one dreams of, goes to, or returns from - in a word, in relation to which one is aware of oneself’. For Sasha's space (both in her hometown and in Torpa), there is no global, topical point of reference: she lives in a space with a real but dreamed-of privacy. This is an introverted environment, which is subordinated to the spatial framework limited by everyday life.

In this context, it is interesting to compare Torpa with its hypertextual double, the city that Sasha visits with the help of the activator book. At the symbolic level, the heroine feels their connection: obviously, according to the concept of the novel's artistic world, this double is an ‘eidos’, a perfect Torpa in the world of hypertext, for which the ‘real’ Torpa is a shadow, a projection. This reading of this topos is supported by the corresponding spatial frame: ‘The city was coal, asphalt. Somewhat similar to Torpa, but perfect’. Unlike the space in the empirical world, this city has a centre: the town hall, which becomes the habitat of the monster (‘it suddenly split, opened like a flower, and from its interior a monster looked at Sasha, the like of which she had never seen before, anywhere, in any nightmare’). Later, during the transfer exam, the heroine suppresses the authorities of this city, controlling the monster with her ‘will’, and takes the ideal Torpa for herself.

Serhii Tsikavyi, Organisation of Artistic Space in the Novel 'Vita Nostra' by M. And S. Diachenko