Nails

Mikhail Elizarov is a prose writer, musician, and author of the novels "Earth" (National Bestseller Award), "The Librarian" (Russian Booker Prize), "Pasternak," and "Cartoons," as well as the short story collections "We Went Out to Smoke at 17" (NOS Readers' Choice Award) and "Cubes." "The Nails" is a collection of short prose by Mikhail Elizarov, featuring early stories and novellas. "Mikhail Elizarov's novella 'Nails' saw the light of day in the early 2000s, was shortlisted for the Andrei Bely Prize, and critic Lev Danilkin named this debut the best of 2001. What was previously considered the deep underground of literature suddenly became legitimized. Figuratively speaking, Elizarov bit off the magical nail, drawing the country into his ritual." (Roman Bogoslovsky) "Bahtov spat out ten transparent crescents onto the newspaper and, depending on how the nails fell, drew conclusions about the future. Under the influence of the nails, the information printed in the newspaper transformed into a prediction, and Bahtov received a program of behavior for the next month for himself and me. The purity of observing the ritual guaranteed our safety. The divination ended with Bahtov deeply scratching his chest with jagged fingers, sprinkling the nails and paper with the blood that appeared, and then burying everything in the ground, whispering unknown words."