by João Cerqueira
Rating: *****
Set in Slavia, a fictional Eastern Bloc country, whose people are brutally oppressed under a vicious, corrupt communist regime led by the unscrupulous Alfred Ionescu and his venal cabal of enforcers, Perestroika is an extraordinary novel, primarily historical fiction yet thriving on inconvertible fact.
Cerqueira unfolds Slavia’s journey from dictatorship to democracy, beginning in 1978 and ending in 1992 through the eyes and experiences of characters from all walks of life and political persuasions. As the Russian concept of “perestroika” begins to sweep through Slavia in the late 1980s, toppling Ionescu’s reign and promising freedom, there is jubilation in the streets, but will one group of authoritarian psychopaths simply be replaced by another…
Perestroika’s narrative is told through the close third-person perspectives of nearly forty individuals, there is no main protagonist, per se, they are all central facets to Cerqueira’s story. It could be leveled, however, that the painter, Ludwig Kirchner becomes the novel’s touchstone, encapsulating its contrasting ideologies.
Cerqueira has written a tour de force. His prose manages to be both lush and austere, complementing the stark dichotomy present in Slavia’s society and many of his characters.
His words contain a subtle seam of bitter, black humor coupled with some wondrous flights of poetic imagery, often describing the most barbaric and ruthless actions and emotions. Nonetheless, Perestroika is effortlessly readable. On a superficially writerly level, it’s razor-sharp and absorbing. Cerqueira’s dialogue is beautifully calibrated and authentic.
And, in his creation of Slavia, Cerqueira has conjured a compelling blend of history and fiction that never resembles a pastiche. Events, socio-political landscapes, and cultural contexts from several communist countries of the time are skilfully blended with nuance and originality.
Notwithstanding, Perestroika is a character-driven novel that exposes the best and worst of the human condition. In the beginning, each chapter is effectively a short story or vignette devoted to a different character, and each character is connected, not always directly.
Layer by layer, Cerqueira builds up these deeply complex, flawed individuals, all very different often with competing or opposing desires and motivations that, in a number of cases, eventually find commonality.
As the novel progresses into the second half, justice is meted out so that each character receives the redemption or retribution they richly deserve, often dosed with a touch of the biblical or allegorical. Even those with decency and integrity possess demons and aspects of damage.
Indeed, a proportion of the cast are morally bankrupt, soulless degenerates who find an outlet for their vile behavior in Slavia’s totalitarian state. Zut Zdanhov, the People’s Commissar for Culture and Propaganda, possibly takes first prize but he has stiff competition.
However, Cerqueira makes these people human, not merely one-dimensional villains, even archfiend Ivan “Koba” Fiorov, and sometimes lends them unexpected impulses and brief flickers of compassion. The chapters toward the end dealing with Schwartz, Olin, and Ionescu’s reckonings are exquisitely painful pieces of writing laced with pathos.
The novel is in two parts, the first has a brutalist, dystopian air and a Kafkaesque gloss of looping despair as befits living under the regime. The second part begins with an atmosphere of emancipated optimism but, as the Utopian dream of perestroika begins to curdle, frantic claustrophobia creeps in, the scenes of writhing despair set in Drugville evoke the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.
Aside from the satirical commentary and metaphorical motifs, Perestroika ostensibly offers a brilliant reflection on this period of history, living under a communist regime and in the aftermath of it being overthrown. Undoubtedly, however, the narrative is heavily inflected by the anxieties and politics of the present.
Perestroika is a sprawling, complex, and compelling masterpiece that bears the hallmark of being Cerqueira’s Magnum Opus. Highly recommended.
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Great review, Rose. This looks like a book to definitely check out!