THE MOUNTAIN AND THE WALL, urgent and trenchant and tendentious reading

THE MOUNTAIN AND THE WALL
ALISA GANIEVA (tr. Carol Apollonio; intro. Ronald Meyer)
Deep Vellum Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.95 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: This remarkable debut novel by a unique young Russian voice portrays the influence of political intolerance and religious violence in the lives of people forced to choose between evils.

The Mountain and the Wall focuses on Shamil, a young local reporter in Makhachkala, and his reactions, or lack thereof, to rumors that the Russian government is building a wall to cut off the Muslim provinces of the Caucasus from the rest of Russia. As unrest spreads and the tension builds, Shamil's life is turned upside down, and he can no longer afford to ignore the violence surrounding him.

With a fine sense for mounting catastrophe, Alisa Ganieva tells the story of the decline of a society torn apart by its inherent extremes.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Wow. The 2025 US needs a writer of this caliber, of this perspicacity, and possessed of this level of moral courage in flensing the rotting whale carcass of our Body Politic. Despite being ten years old (!), this near-future story of a country's takeover by religious extremists with an extremely high-control agenda is fresh as yesterday's op-ed page.

The unnervingly spot-on takedowns of "do as I say not as I do" hypocrisy, of hyperconsumerist end-stage capitalism, and of youthful hedonism's blinding obfuscation of the petty tyrannies and ideological inconsisencies of the new regime *rock*. Author Ganieva saw what was happening in Dagestan, a north Caucasian conflict zone nominally still part of Russia, and puts it all on just over 250 pages of unsparing prose.

Complacent US people ought to read it as soon as possible. The consequences of remaining blind to the end result of the unfolding coup are dire. It's all made perfectly plain here. It's also wryly amusing, at time darkly funny, and a very quick read. Shamil, our intrepid reporter main character, would win a Pulitzer in the US journalism space despite being pretty hapless...though largely not culpable for it, given the system he works within.

The atrocious anti-intellectual and anti-historical religious nuts are the better armed barbarian compadres of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting-killing, science-denying, book-banning idiots in the US. Their biggest head start on our vandals is their well-honed dagger of misogyny, held at the throats of every woman not veiled and submissive.

I do not want to live in their world. Their solution to that is to kill men like me for refusing to pretend they are the god-anointed masters of Earth. Resisting them is the way I stay able to look at myself in the mirror.

I hope you will take the same heart from this brief, inexpensive read.