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Two women, Valma and Kadrina, are marked by an addiction to alcohol that devours mind and body, and their lives cross in a psychiatric clinic. Looking back, the novel traces the roads their illness has taken: for one, it starts in childhood, when her grandfather, a communist and avowed atheist, lets her taste strong drink, and deepens through domestic violence and the loss of loved ones. The clinic, a place of shame, violence and poor hygiene, becomes the stage for intimate confessions and a reckoning with their lives. Besides the collapse of values and cold alienation that addiction brings, the book takes in folk rites, spells, a closed Shia community, the Aliani, and monastic life, as one of the women finds refuge in late-found faith.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

392 pages in the original

First published

2024 by Knigomania

ISBN

9786191953738 (original)