A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

A huge and powerful, if not always easy going novel. After The Tsar of Love and Techno — last year's favourite read — anything else by Marra was always going to face a high hurdle. Arguably, Constellation deserves more plaudits than Tsar, since it is Marra's first novel, and speaks to the potential more fully and visibly realised in his second work. Nonetheless, there is a superbly effortless style of writing, a beauty of prose, an intuitive grasp of similes that work, and an ability to take the mundane and render it significant. In a fashion not dissimilar to David Mitchell, Marra embeds stories within stories, and their overlapping — the wonderful and curious nature of fate — help make this novel work. The challenge in reading Constellation is that it is set in Chechnya over the decade in which the country was twice decimated by war. For a Western reader to imagine such circumstances is hard. Marra writes with empathy and poignancy. The novel is about hope and redemption, the difficult moral choices it is necessary to make under severely straitened circumstances. It is, at turns, both sad and funny, constantly gripping and also a wonderful story. There are multiple heroes and even the villains may be considered somewhat exempted, operating out of context. Chechnya 1994–2004 would reasonably have shifted anyone's moral compass. If you take anything away from this, then it has to be the power of belief. Often breathtaking. 9½/10.

By Anthony Marra