Siberia

By Nikolai Maslov

In 2000, Nikolai Maslov, a night watchman and self-taught artist, asked Emmanuel Durand, a French book salesman in Moscow, to look at three panels from a graphic novel he had drawn. Stunned by the intensity of the work, Durand offered Maslov a modest advance to quit his job and finish the book. The result is this extraordinary visual portrayal of Russian life and spirit. Awash in alcohol from the first pages to the last, Siberia charts Maslov's bleak path through the labyrinths of the Soviet system, from the desolate Siberian countryside, to military service with the Red Army in Mongolia, to the psychiatric hospital where he was admitted after his brother's death. Drawn entirely in pencil on paper, the book's nuanced gray tones document with unremitting clarity and delicate nuance the austere Siberian landscape, the bad vodka, the daily brawls, the cynicism and violence of life in Siberia, but also the perseverance and hope of those in this often neglected but fascinating part of the world.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1933368039
• ISBN13: 9781933368030
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: Soft Skull
• Length: 100 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 11.8" x 0.3" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 9 and higher

Customer Reviews

More than a sketchbook - the story of an incredible life.

Nikolai Maslov's Siberia unfolds as a series of brief, telling vignettes that portray the bleak misery and utter absurdity of life behind the Iron Curtain. A man laps spilled wine from a puddle on the floor of a pig sty. Nikolai is rejected from art school because his work does not "show the advantages of the Soviet way of life". To the contrary, the grayscale pencil sketches in Siberia should be enough to dispel any lingering revolutionary nostalgia or apologism. Gray like his dystopian homeland, Maslov's desolate landscapes and characters seem equally devoid of life. Nearly all who haunt Siberia's panels have resigned themselves to a vodka-induced complacency, and even Nikolai succumbs to this prevailing dispiritedness at times throughout the account. Siberia is created in such a way that one wonders if the author had read any other graphic novels before penning his own. It is Maslov's apparent unfamiliarity with the genre and style that makes his memoir so unique; it is unblemished by the influence and clichés of his peers. Like many, Nikolai seeks refuge in art and its creation. Yet an artist of his time and place must be an organ of the state, or keep his work to himself. Each sketch is pregnant with meaning, as is the very style of his work. Maslov chooses to portray the world of his youth in grim charcoal, the antithesis of the heroic, colorful celebrations he was urged to create--and this time he gets to show us. That he survived to relate his story speaks to his thirst for life, and that we are so profoundly affected by it speaks to his abilities as an author and artist. The medium by which Maslov has chosen to share his reflections may be unique, but, sadly, the tragedy of the Soviet experience was shared by far too many.