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Hello Alice! Tell us about yourself and your literary debut.
I am from Dagestan. When I was 17 I came to Moscow to study at the Gorky Literature Institute.
I wanted to be a reviewer, not a writer.
When I was a student and after my graduation I dealt with literary reviews,
published my works as a reviewer and analyst of modern literature and major works by my peers –
young writers who were born in the 70-80s.
This modern literature was very interesting for me
because it reflects a transitional period for the country,
and it is a new generation of writers who were raised after Perestroika;
they have a unique mentality and their texts reflect this.
I had been waiting for a long time for a new author to appear in the Caucasus,
not necessarily a young author,
but a new name who will creatively reconsider the very interesting processes
which are now happening in the Caucasus – social, religious, and other processes.
But there was no such a writer, unfortunately.
That is why, 4 years ago, I created the writer by myself.
I even gave him a name.
The writer was called Gulla Khirachev – it was my male pen-name.
I wrote a novella titled “Salam to you, Dalgat!”
It was my first work describing one day of a young Makhachkala resident.
Then I sent this novella to the literary competition “Debut” for young authors.
At that time the age requirement was 25.
My hero called Gulla Khirachev at first got onto the long-list,
then onto the short-list for the award.
And the novella began to be discussed.
It caused interest among Moscow and Dagestani journalists.
Moscow journalists wanted to know what was going on in the Caucasus, to hear an internal voice.
They were looking forward to the talented guy
who had to come to the awards in Moscow and saw him.
But the Caucasus journalists tried to find out who he was, who was wearing a mask, who was hiding.
I was an active participant in the mystification.
For several months I was wearing the mask in icq, e-mail, I gave interviews on behalf of this young man,
i.e. I did a lot of stuff.
And at last my identity was revealed, when I had to come up on stage and get the award.
Of course, everybody saw that, first of all, I wasn’t a man,
and secondly, I was a person who had been living in Moscow for several years.
Please, tell us about your new book
Last autumn, in 2012, my second book was published by “AST.”
This is my first novel, it is called “The Holiday Mountain.”
It describes the hypothetical separation of the Caucasus from Russia.
This scenario is being discussed by everybody today:
from liberals to nationalists, from ordinary people to philosophers and politicians.
For me, the scenario is a writer’s technique.
The novel is not about politics and even not about separation, but the small fates of many people.
There are a lot of characters, they all develop, discuss, go to protest actions, get married, die.
In this text I play with the language, including various stylizations and parodies.
I hope that this book will be interesting to absolutely anyone,
including those who don’t live in the Caucasus and have never been there
and who are interested in looking at small unique cultures in the modern world,
which have found themselves at the crossroads of various globalizations
– Western globalization in a cheap and primitive sense and Eastern globalization -
as shallow forms of Islam.
