Salon

Zakhar Prilepin took the prize at the National Bestseller (NatsBest) literary award ceremony, held at the Astoria Hotel in St. Petersburg on June 8, for his "novel in short stories," "Grekh," or "Sin." The organizers did their best to put on a show, with members of the jury -- ranging from last year's winner Ilya Boyashov to economist Boris Fyodorov to the glamorous actress Emilia Spivak -- announcing their votes in turn.

The competition was tight: Dmitry Bykov, the finalist at virtually every previous NatsBest competition, didn't make it onto the shortlist this time. Also in contention were "Chelovek s Yaitsom," or "The Man with An Egg," a biography of controversial author Alexander Prokhanov by the influential literature critic of Afisha magazine, Lev Danilkin, Anna Kozlova's Generation Y novel "Lyudi c Chistoi Sovestyu," or "People With a Clear Conscience," the alternative history novel set in war-time Leningrad, "Spat i Verit," or "To Sleep and To Believe" by Andrei Turgenev, the cryptic "Mezensefalon," or "Mesencephalon," by Yuri Brigadir and an oriental fantasy "Dva Lartsa: Biryuzoby i Nefritovy, or "Two Boxes: Turquoise and Jade" by China scholar Alexander Sekatsky. A separate vote by Internet users chose Brigadir's novel.

Prilepin served in the army in Chechnya and was a member of Eduard Limonov's banned National Bolshevik Party. His collection of short stories and poems, united by a common hero, Zakhar, was called "a novel" apparently because of commercial considerations: Publishing houses today shun the short story. The poems were better than I expected, but they did not escape the usual dilemma of all contemporary Russian poetry -- the balance between the banal and the artificial. There are very few poets who can walk this line, and Prilepin is not one of them. The stories revisited many themes from Prilepin's previous novel, "Sankya": The dull rhythm of Russian provincial life, the booze, the violence. Some of the scenes are disturbing and memorable, such as the killing of the pig in the story that gave the book its name; others are touching or deeply sad.

Prilepin's strongest point is his eye for detail and his masterful description of fight-or-flight situations. One of the most powerful stories is "Six Cigarettes," in which Zakhar, this time a bouncer in a small-time provincial nightclub, describes an unusually eventful shift. His feeling of unease and the taste of blood in his mouth are conveyed to the reader on a very physical level. Prilepin seems to be still struggling to find his voice, but he is definitely moving in the right direction.