The Orphanage, by the Ukrainian writer Serhiy Viktorovych Zhadan (Serhij Zadan), is my favourite book I have read so far this year and definitely one of the best books I have ever read. Yale University Press published an English translation of this magnificent novel in April 2021.
The Orphanage is a novel about ‘the apocalypse’, occupation, helplessness, and living in constant fear when the reality surrounding us changes unexpectedly.
It is worth noting that the names Donbas, Donetsk, Russia, or Ukraine are not mentioned in the book even once. However, we can assume that Internat is a portrayal of life in war-torn Donetsk around 2015. According to the 2020 OHCHR report, during the war in eastern Ukraine, 13,000 people were killed, 30,000 were wounded, over 1,000,000 Ukrainians were internally displaced, and around 900,000 were forced to flee abroad.
Zhadan’s book is set in a dark, grim, war-torn, unnamed city [Donetsk, Eastern Ukraine], covered in dirty snow and mud. From there, the main protagonist, Pasha, a 35-year-old teacher of the Ukrainian language, sets off from the outskirts towards the centre of the city to pick up his nephew from the Internat [boarding school/orphanage] and bring him back to their family home. As we follow Pasha through his three-day-long journey, we understand that there are some of us and some of them fighting in every street. There is chaos, fear, hunger, and confusion.
Extreme cold and snow cover the entire city and make navigating its streets even more difficult. Pasha realises that it is better not to get used to people one might encounter by chance, as anyone is in danger of dying at any moment. In these circumstances, human nature manifests itself in a more evident manner, and human emotions become more tangible; they are not only felt but also seen. There is compassion, empathy, and solidarity on the one hand, but on the other, selfishness and indifference to human suffering are also prevalent. The only guiding force here is a constant, omnipresent fear.
It is impossible to know who is who and which side of the conflict they are on; who is a friend and who is an enemy; how to talk to whom; what might result from an accidental encounter; how to behave; what attitude to adopt; or even what accent to speak with.
Demarcation lines constantly change, and for Pasha and his nephew, returning home safely proves to be an impossibly difficult task.
The atmosphere in this book is intense, stuffy, unbearable, tiring, anxious, and fearful; the reader wants Pasha to free himself from this situation as soon as possible.
Pasha is a passive figure in both his personal and professional life. When the war breaks out, Pasha thinks that it has nothing to do with him because he is ‘apolitical’. He does not support either side in the conflict, has no interest in politics, does not want to watch the news, and does not want to know what is going on beyond the four walls he occupies. He just wants to do his job as a teacher; he does not want to get involved in anything that might appear remotely political.
Pasha’s ability to navigate conversations with random people and soldiers he encounters, and the mental acrobatics he performs in order not to reveal himself as either a supporter or an enemy of either side, allows him to distance himself from the situation and rationalise it, at least initially. His worldview comes at the price of profound emotional pain as the world around him changes beyond recognition: the villages have been deserted, buses are now running empty, and the landscape is desolate. All Pasha sees now is sheer emptiness and greyness. This new reality shocks him.
As we follow Pasha, his ‘indifferent’, or rather ‘impartial’, attitude towards the surrounding reality is often put to the test. The readers feel every single emotion that Pasha does when meeting random people and visiting different places. The people encountered by our protagonist along his journey appear only for a few moments. There might be some verbal exchange or deafening silence, and then they disappear again.
Pasha’s attitude is a metaphor for the attitudes of some within Ukrainian society, as well as within the international community in the West.
Throughout the book, we do not really see hostilities and killings. We know they are happening, but we do not witness them. This only adds to the horror of the reality, the unease, and the anxiety of the war zone that Pasha and his nephew experience. We can hear the sounds of explosions and gunshots, or chilling silence, all the time, which only strengthens the sense of fear, claustrophobia, humiliation, alienation, paranoia, and total hopelessness.
What distinguishes this book is the fact that it is written in a very realistic way, in which Zhadan manages to capture the topography of the city. The reader can accurately imagine the streets, blocks of flats, ruins, abandoned buildings, and highways. We could draw the route that Pasha follows on a map of Donetsk.
The language in the book is poetic, but at the same time it is accompanied by a strange roughness; it speaks directly to our raw emotions. The author’s linguistic sensitivity is evident on every page. As a reader, you feel besieged in the same way that Pasha does, especially when Zhadan describes the anxious atmosphere of the railway station, the decomposing corpses of dogs, and people wandering around aimlessly in an unknown direction.
The Orphanage focuses on the most humane dimension of war: the senseless suffering of accidental victims. Zhadan does not advocate for either side. It is not about who is right and who is wrong: war has no victors. Although it may seem that the novel, like its main protagonist, avoids choosing sides in the conflict, an ‘impartial’, ‘indifferent’ attitude and non-involvement are not praised either. This makes Internat a truly universal story. Zhadan leaves it up to his readers to draw their own conclusions and form their own opinions about the protagonist’s attitude.
This is a book about human behaviour during times of ‘apocalypse’. It is about the indifference of those whom the war does not concern. It also shows how war affects not only the outside world but also the internal world of human relationships between members of one family, neighbours, and strangers living in the same city.
Pasha’s story unfolds over the course of three days. Zhadan shows us that this is all that is needed to change an entire country and its people: to take away their rights, to force them to take sides, and to ‘cancel’ the reality they have lived in for decades. Three days is just a blip in one’s life, but it is all it takes to cause societal collapse. There is something both banal and extraordinary about it.
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