![]() ![]() The mythic character Koschei survives by entrusting his soul to a needle that he hides in animals, nested one inside the other like Russia dolls. Schooled in fairy tales alongside Pushkin’s poetry, Mitya understands magic as a condition of being. We come to grips with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the growing pains of the new Russia through the eyes of the earnest young Muscovite who is its central character. But the book calls upon magical realism less to divert readers from history than to focus us upon it. Katya Kazbek’s debut novel, Little Foxes Took Up Matches, offsets a gritty story of Russian political turbulence in the 1990s with the dreamy retelling of a classic Slavic folktale. But there are other means by which we can witness suffering rather than merely watch it unfold. HOW DO WE acknowledge political violence from afar without reducing ourselves to spectators? Facing the pain done to others through the lens of the documentary camera is tricky, as Susan Sontag has famously argued. ![]()
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