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Asystole: A Novel
From the first pages it becomes apparent that Asystole is a novel about love of life in its purest, instinctive and intimate form. It’s also a novel about human faith in its existence and a desire to experience this love. Author Oleg Pavlov places his character � a boy who grows to be a man and is clearly personified by the writer’s own outlook on life � in impossible and familiar circumstances, impossible not to relate to.
An adult is shaped in childhood. Chaotic, anxious and at the same time withdrawn narration seems to have no direction and no resolution. Except that the life of the people, who are in fact children of a broken destiny, is real and not much needs to be said to make it our own. Laconic and ‘to the point� observations of Pavlov’s protagonist as he goes, are chilling at times. They pierce through flesh right to the bone � the quality only the naked truth can have.
Asystole is moreover about the by-stander effect, about a disconnected and malfunctioning society and a struggle of one not to merge into the faceless mass of many. Modern, deeply thought through and heartfelt, this novel is an examination of the physics of human soul. Pavlov’s Universe has a special arrangement � if it was up to him, humans wouldn’t be allowed in it, for the privilege of being human requires living up to the title.
***
Oleg Pavlov
Born in Moscow in 1970, Oleg Pavlov is a critically acclaimed, award winning author who puts social and personal themes at the core of his writing. His trademark is uncovering the truth about life and the preciousness of our time on this planet. Use life wisely: live to love, but live to love humanely, with total dedication� this is the message the author sends out into the world from the pages of his novels.
Pavlov has a military background: the lessons he learned during military service in some of the most inhospitable places where he witnessed heart wrenching tragedy, some of which serves as inspiration for his narrative, which is often immediate, sharp, and absolute.
Being diagnosed as mentally unstable ended Pavlov’s career in the army and the resulting stigma also meant the end of his prospects for a high-status career. Whilst working as a janitor, he quickly realized that his life was a palette he could draw from, and so he began to write. The implications of this epiphany came full circle in his 1994 literary debut, Captain of the Steppe, was recognized by the Russian Booker Prize committee as one of the top six novels of the year.
There was more triumph to come for Pavlov following this first publication: since then, he has authored many novels, articles and essays on some of the most burning subjects in contemporary Russian society. Today, Pavlov is a celebrated member of the modern Russian canon and remains an intriguing figure as well as a literary phenomenon of the highest calibre.
An adult is shaped in childhood. Chaotic, anxious and at the same time withdrawn narration seems to have no direction and no resolution. Except that the life of the people, who are in fact children of a broken destiny, is real and not much needs to be said to make it our own. Laconic and ‘to the point� observations of Pavlov’s protagonist as he goes, are chilling at times. They pierce through flesh right to the bone � the quality only the naked truth can have.
Asystole is moreover about the by-stander effect, about a disconnected and malfunctioning society and a struggle of one not to merge into the faceless mass of many. Modern, deeply thought through and heartfelt, this novel is an examination of the physics of human soul. Pavlov’s Universe has a special arrangement � if it was up to him, humans wouldn’t be allowed in it, for the privilege of being human requires living up to the title.
***
Oleg Pavlov
Born in Moscow in 1970, Oleg Pavlov is a critically acclaimed, award winning author who puts social and personal themes at the core of his writing. His trademark is uncovering the truth about life and the preciousness of our time on this planet. Use life wisely: live to love, but live to love humanely, with total dedication� this is the message the author sends out into the world from the pages of his novels.
Pavlov has a military background: the lessons he learned during military service in some of the most inhospitable places where he witnessed heart wrenching tragedy, some of which serves as inspiration for his narrative, which is often immediate, sharp, and absolute.
Being diagnosed as mentally unstable ended Pavlov’s career in the army and the resulting stigma also meant the end of his prospects for a high-status career. Whilst working as a janitor, he quickly realized that his life was a palette he could draw from, and so he began to write. The implications of this epiphany came full circle in his 1994 literary debut, Captain of the Steppe, was recognized by the Russian Booker Prize committee as one of the top six novels of the year.
There was more triumph to come for Pavlov following this first publication: since then, he has authored many novels, articles and essays on some of the most burning subjects in contemporary Russian society. Today, Pavlov is a celebrated member of the modern Russian canon and remains an intriguing figure as well as a literary phenomenon of the highest calibre.
336 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
2 people are currently reading
33 people want to read
About the author
Oleg Pavlov
18books8followersOleg Pavlov (Russian: Олег Олегович Павлов; born: March 16, 1970 in Moscow) was a prominent Russian writer, and a winner of the Russian Booker Prize.
Born in Moscow, he served in the Interior Ministry troops near the city of Karaganda. The events that Pavlov portrayed in his stories and novels were inspired by his own experiences as a prison camp guard.
During his service, Pavlov suffered a head injury, was hospitalised, and spent over a month in a psychiatric ward. This allowed him to be released from the army before the end of the mandatory two-year military service. He went on to study at the Institute of Literature in Moscow.
He was only 24 years old when his first novel, Kazennaya skazka, was published in the Novy Mir Russian monthly magazine. He was noticed by the critics and the Russian Booker Prize jury, which short-listed the novel for the 1995 prize.
His next novel was The Matiushin Case (1997).
Pavlov received the Russian Booker Prize in 2002 for his book "Ninth Day Party in Karaganda: or the Story of the Recent Days" (Karagandinskiye deviatiny).
Pavlov was also the author of articles on literature, historical and social aspects of life in Russia, as well as numerous essays. In his 2003 book "The Russian Man in the 20th Century" he wrote about Russian life, not only based on his personal experience, but also on numerous letters received by the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Foundation in the early 1990s and given to him by the famous Russian writer and dissident and his wife, Natalia.
Oleg Pavlov was said to be one of the most gifted examples of what has been dubbed the “renaissance in Russian literature.�
Pavlov’s novel Asystole (colloquially “cardiac flatline�) was about the tragic essence of human life, the loneliness of the individual in the world of people on the importance and power of love. The novel reads like a confession. Its name sounds like a diagnosis. Asystole - cessation of cardiac activity, cardiac arrest. But the capacity to love gives meaning to life, had been languishing. The novel was published in 2009, prompting the reader an emotional shock, becoming, according to critics, one of the major literary events of recent times. The epigraph to it could be the lines of the European philosopher Emile Cioran Michel: "health - lack of feeling, and therefore - unreality. Ceased to suffer, will cease to exist."
Pavlov died of a heart attack in 2018, aged 48.
Born in Moscow, he served in the Interior Ministry troops near the city of Karaganda. The events that Pavlov portrayed in his stories and novels were inspired by his own experiences as a prison camp guard.
During his service, Pavlov suffered a head injury, was hospitalised, and spent over a month in a psychiatric ward. This allowed him to be released from the army before the end of the mandatory two-year military service. He went on to study at the Institute of Literature in Moscow.
He was only 24 years old when his first novel, Kazennaya skazka, was published in the Novy Mir Russian monthly magazine. He was noticed by the critics and the Russian Booker Prize jury, which short-listed the novel for the 1995 prize.
His next novel was The Matiushin Case (1997).
Pavlov received the Russian Booker Prize in 2002 for his book "Ninth Day Party in Karaganda: or the Story of the Recent Days" (Karagandinskiye deviatiny).
Pavlov was also the author of articles on literature, historical and social aspects of life in Russia, as well as numerous essays. In his 2003 book "The Russian Man in the 20th Century" he wrote about Russian life, not only based on his personal experience, but also on numerous letters received by the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Foundation in the early 1990s and given to him by the famous Russian writer and dissident and his wife, Natalia.
Oleg Pavlov was said to be one of the most gifted examples of what has been dubbed the “renaissance in Russian literature.�
Pavlov’s novel Asystole (colloquially “cardiac flatline�) was about the tragic essence of human life, the loneliness of the individual in the world of people on the importance and power of love. The novel reads like a confession. Its name sounds like a diagnosis. Asystole - cessation of cardiac activity, cardiac arrest. But the capacity to love gives meaning to life, had been languishing. The novel was published in 2009, prompting the reader an emotional shock, becoming, according to critics, one of the major literary events of recent times. The epigraph to it could be the lines of the European philosopher Emile Cioran Michel: "health - lack of feeling, and therefore - unreality. Ceased to suffer, will cease to exist."
Pavlov died of a heart attack in 2018, aged 48.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 15, 2022
Hospitals are the saddest places in the world�
A patient, through the fog of his disease, recalls the past� Monotonous childhood� The first sexual experience � gonorrhea � venereal clinic� Tremors of his sudden, reciprocal love� His dream to become a renowned artist� The first success� Bliss is a tiny islet� Hopes are so deceitful� Onward races the midnight special train of existence� And somewhere ahead there is the last tragic station� Despair and anxiety� Angst and bitterness� And thirst for life�
Asystole� Cardiac arrest� Full stop.
In one bed, under a sheet, the body of a woman, heavy as a snowdrift. She is delirious, and calling for someone in her fever.
In another, an old man so wizened only his head seems to be left, a mask on a pillow with a respiratory tube in the gap for the mouth.
A pungent smell of injections and disinfectant.
Stubble, a weak chin, swollen lips, a pointed, gristly nose. He looks like a teacher. A young, chubby face, already worn out. A bare, swaddled little fellow in a very ordinary municipal hospital’s palliative care ward which reeks of chlorine. A boy who loved everyone. Everyone. For how long? For how many days, nights? He has lost all sense of time, which has stopped in this white-tiled antechamber where sounds are so clear, the hollow white noise of the cosmos. This sterile, washed out place they have brought him to, isolated and alone, is like a sci-fi film set, a module in an alien spacecraft where the purpose of the equipment is to sustain life. But life is ebbing away and the man is floating effortlessly, weightlessly, a boat drifting without oars or sails downstream to somewhere unseen, unknown, far away.
A patient, through the fog of his disease, recalls the past� Monotonous childhood� The first sexual experience � gonorrhea � venereal clinic� Tremors of his sudden, reciprocal love� His dream to become a renowned artist� The first success� Bliss is a tiny islet� Hopes are so deceitful� Onward races the midnight special train of existence� And somewhere ahead there is the last tragic station� Despair and anxiety� Angst and bitterness� And thirst for life�
He saw everything as a garden which had vanished into this moment of autumn, and took a deep breath of the dankness of the earth. Autumn, these people like fallen leaves. For them, it was all over.
Asystole� Cardiac arrest� Full stop.
August 30, 2010
"Liked it" doesn't express my feelings about Asystole -- I didn't enjoy it at all, but I do respect Pavlov's ability to keep me reading this relentlessly depressing stream-of-narration novel about a horribly unhappy man.
My blog will let you in on more of the drear, .
My blog will let you in on more of the drear, .
December 4, 2010
Эмоций больше чем событий и фактов, и чтобы разобраться с навязанным эмоциональным фоном, в общем то об одном и том же, приходися скипать абзацы и выхватывать отдельные фразы, разбавляя концентрат.
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