Over 15 years ago, the writer Anna Starobinets (Moscow, 1978) had an idea for an ambitious television series, 20 episodes co-written with her husband, also writer Alexander Garros, who passed away in 2017. "It was set in Manchuria, in northern China, in the 1920s, blending historical and geopolitical complexities with Chinese, Japanese, and Russian folklore," she explains from Barcelona, where she has just arrived after leaving Georgia, where she had exiled herself following the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. "Originally, it was going to be filmed, but the producers told us that at that time in Russia, the Soviet Red Army and the White Tsarist Army coexisted, and viewers might doubt who the good guys were. So, we had to move it to 1945," she explains with a smile.
The project was put on hold until years later, when Starobinets, now a precocious queen of fantastic, horror, and dystopian literature in her country, a celebrated author of children's books and even a Disney screenwriter, decided to pick it up again. "It hurt me that all those characters had been left in a sort of limbo, so I had to ask the production company to grant me the rights to turn it into a novel. Due to my persistent insistence, calling them every two weeks, they eventually agreed," she recalls.
The result is the monumental and absorbing The Ford of the Foxes (Impedimenta), a work of over 700 pages that integrates suggestive fantastic realism with a pure spy novel plot, skillfully mixing elements of historical fiction and philosophical parable. The plot transports us to the end of World War II and follows the former soldier and now escaped prisoner Max Cronin who, deprived of his memory, sets off to Manchuria in search of his wife Yelena, abducted by the Japanese Army to participate in murky human experiments. In between, ambitious mentalists, demotivated Soviet soldiers, a community of "Old Believers" who continue to live as in Tsarist times, Japanese scientists, and Chinese fishermen and bandits parade through the book.
"That place and time were perfect because it was a very tumultuous moment where there was a truly surprising mix of nationalities, various traditions, and interests. There were some Japanese, local Chinese people, Soviet soldiers, exiles from the White Army... and all their beliefs, customs, and traditions merged," explains Starobinets, who thought that this syncretic and eclectic atmosphere allowed her to introduce the many fantastic elements of the book. "In addition to Cronin, the other axis of the plot are the Huli jing, the fox women called kitsune in Japan. I fell in love with this mythological being as a child when I was studying Japanese. I was fascinated that in such traditional societies as these, there were characters so extremely feminist," she defends.
"Each person must decide, but if given the opportunity to merge my consciousness into a greater entity, and retain my memories, I would not reject it"
In addition to living for several centuries, the Huli jing use men only for conception, as if they fall in love with them, they steal their life energy. "This form of love was a powerful and dramatic idea that I wanted to explore in a novel," adds the writer, who also introduces in the novel several characters eager for power, glory, and especially immortality, leading to intense philosophical debates about life, death, and the soul that interweave Western and Eastern traditions. "Both in literature and in real life, the motivations of villains are always simple: basically money and power, also sex, another form of power, or revenge. So, I came up with this old human dream of eternal life that, taken to the extreme, can also lead to the abyss," she reflects.
This idea of eliminating death, which is currently being explored in transhumanism, has been the subject of several works by the author, as seen in the stories The Icarus Gland (Impedimenta, 2023), however, here the answer is not technology, but mystical and philosophical faith, as befits a more Eastern vision focused on the Tao. "It is interesting to reflect that in Eastern philosophy, the way to escape death is not based on individuality as in the West, but on becoming part of a larger power, of a superior entity," points out Starobinets. And she asks: "How much of us must remain for us to continue being human? That is, whether we rebuild our body with technology or our soul travels to another body, we cease to be ourselves. Each person must decide if it is desirable, but if given the opportunity to merge my consciousness into a greater entity, and retain my memories, I would not reject it."
Radicalization, exile, and war
Dehumanization, that great theme of Russian literature, is raised here through loyalty, as many of the novel's characters develop a radical loyalty, whether to the homeland, to an ideal, to a love... "It is very dangerous because even if it is cloaked in noble feelings, when you pour blind loyalty into a specific idea, you lose your humanity, you become a psychopath capable of doing the most terrible things for that idea," the writer asserts, alluding indirectly to the situation in Russia, which, as reflected in her book, she believes is currently dominated by its "Eastern part."
"Europe needs to understand that Russia is not exactly Europe. There is a part of the country that is like the West, and I belong to that part, but the majority, both geographically and mentally, is absolutely Asian, Eastern. And this is reflected in the dictatorial and tribal way in which Putin governs Russia," Starobinets concludes. And she adds: "He has revived that Asian ideology that Russians are guardians of the borders and has tried to make people think that they should not follow the liberal rules of the West because they do not work for us. This change is the reason why I had to leave the country."
"We have learned that war never ends in Russia. It has become a cursed country where it has become as difficult to enter as to leave"
Despite the success of her novel, published in early 2022, or perhaps because of it, Starobinets fled her country after being included in a blacklist affecting intellectuals considered enemies by the regime. "The paradox is that my books are still not banned, so in a way, I still exist in Russia but without my body, which cannot return," she explains with an ironic smile.
The same smile she uses to affirm that, although she finished the book months before the start of the attack on Ukraine, one of her characters constantly repeats that war never ends. "Indeed, we have learned that war never ends in Russia," she admits. A war that is not only military. "Two days ago, they arrested a friend of my daughter, a 21-year-old poet, for talking about suicide and homosexuality in his work. He was going to exile to London the following week," she says sadly. "Just like the Ford of the Foxes in my novel, Russia has become a cursed country, where it has become as difficult to enter as to leave."