Samara the fantastic

Abstract

The article discusses three novels, where events take place in Samara (Kuibyshev). These are "Metro-2033: Bezymyanka [Underground-2033: Bezymyanka] (2010) by Sergey Paliy, "Bezymyanlag" (2016) by Andrey Olekh and "Pischeblock [Food Unit] (2018) by Alexey Ivanov. The work reveals the reasons for this localization of events that is identical for all the authors. In all the three cases, the location plays an important narrative role, which is explained in the article by both the authors' hope to get the Samara readers sympathetic attention, and the need to have specific recognizable details that is characteristic of mass literature, which give force to generally sketchy narration. Urban history facts, geographical marks, well-known loci local mythological narratives associated with them play the role of such details. The Samara portrait is constructed taking into account the tradition of depicting provincial existence as an alternative to metropolitan life, developed in the literature of the XIX century. The province could be idealized as a world of harmony, lost by the city, or ridiculed as a centre of savagery and backwardness. But these novels show Samara, surprisingly combining both the terror of urban life and the salutariness of suburbs. The heroes are tasked to escape to move from urban space to country one, facing unbelievable difficulties. Samara is a convenient locus for genre works: this city is not tagged with the characteristics firmly fixed in the mass consciousness, so anything can happen there. Such Samara absorbs all the worst and all the best that can be told about any city. The sharp polarization of its features enables to create a semantic field where events take place in a very way - that increases the dynamics of the described actions and makes them especially impressive in the readers eyes.