‘Not a good time for positive heroes’

Abstract

E. Konstantinova interviews R. Senchin, a writer, journalist, shortlisted entry and winner of numerous literary prizes: Russian Booker (2009), National Bestseller (2010), The Culture Prize of the Russian Government (2012), Yasnaya Polyana (2014), The Big Book [Bolshaya Kniga] (2015), and others. They discuss Senchin’s personal creative experiments and discoveries as well as contemporary Russian prose in general. Senchin opines that modern literature, having digested the experiences of the ‘new realism’ of the 1990s–2000s, has moved on to discover writers’ individual characteristics and harness new subjects, including documentary ones. Given the limitations of the forms and methods of artistic literature, Senchin argues, an unexpected choice of topic, language, intonation or plot comes to the forefront. However, he prefers to stick to recognizable, traditional subjects and recurrent characters. The exploration of the motivations and personality of those characters (the writer Savateev and the office clerk Chashchin) takes up most of the interview.