Well, here goes to the first book I finished in 2025!
A beautiful read about Gorz's retrospectives and realizations about the nature of his love towarWell, here goes to the first book I finished in 2025!
A beautiful read about Gorz's retrospectives and realizations about the nature of his love towards his wife Dorine.
Might be returning to this review soon-ish to add more, but for the moment I'll post a quote that resonated with me the most about why he wrote so little about his wife over the past decades spent together:
"Being passionately in love for the first time, being loved in return—this was apparently too banal, too private, too common; it wasn't the kind of material that would allow me to rise to the universal. A love affair that's hit the rocks, that can never be—now that, on the other hand, makes for high literature. I'm comfortable with the art of failure and annihilation, not with the art of success and positive affirmation....more
I struggle to give this book a rating similarly to how I struggle to (definitively) say, that I enjoyed it. Upon what scale do I measure what I had juI struggle to give this book a rating similarly to how I struggle to (definitively) say, that I enjoyed it. Upon what scale do I measure what I had just read? As whom do I read the book? Dana the Ukrainian? Dana the book blogger? Do I read it as a journalist and make the best attempt to be impartial? Do I read it as a person with a degree in international relations? Should I rate it based off of my emotions? The content? The idea? The fact, that I was reading a historical document?
I see no shame in admitting, that I, like many people I know, had hoped Navalny could be THE force of change in Russia. Having followed his activities closely for years, ultimately I was left disappointed. Navalny was undoubtedly a smart man and a true patriot of Russia, but let us not confuse him with a saviour, a universal answer, an anti-venom to all the evil done by Russia. The only thing left for us to do is speculate and come up with countless "what ifs", hypotheticals on what kind of president he would or would not be.
There is an episode in the book, when under trial for the Kirov case, Navalny mentions how a partner of his, a local businessman, who was trialled alongside with him, was given a choice: to have his business activities obscured, thus being unable to provide for his 5 kids, or to provide any real or false kompromat to incriminate Alexei. Navalny ruminates, but quickly comes to the realisation, that he would not blame the man for choosing himself, no matter how morally unrighteousness that decision would be.
This nuance adds to the author's portrait and solidifies my idea, that although we are dealing with a man who has said and done, and this I sincerely believe, everything with Russia's best intentions in mind, many of these things, nonetheless, were done to the detriment of my country � Ukraine. I am under no illusion, that if given the opportunity to pick between Russia's survival and Ukraine's independence, Navalny would, too, pick what is dear to him. The sad reality of this choice is that for Russia to continue existing in the way she currently is, to keep all her republics and regions intact, she must engage in war and she must keep seizing territory. The devil you know is better than a devil you don't, hence his remarks on Crimea, the annexation of which was mentioned by Navalny in only one sentence at the beginning of chapter 15, which is .
This is why it's so important to not take subjective recollections as blunt facts. It is our role, as the readers, to be the seekers of "the truth", to dig deep and to pay attention to the surrounding contexts, like, for example, the reviews written by Ukrainians under this book. Disregarding them bluntly is disregarding the important tones and hues of a story, that never has and never will have just one colour, and by a "story", of course, a mean a human life.
So yes, read this book to form an idea on Navalny and the political realities of modern-day Russia, but don't forget to read others as well: on Russian imperialism and colonialism, on Ukraine and its history, on freedom, on war. ...more
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