Siberia [Paperback]

Nikolai Maslov (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 2006

In 2000, Nikolaï Maslov, a night watchman and self-taught artist, asked Emmanuel Durand, a French book salesman in Moscow, to look at three panels from a graphic novel he had drawn. Stunned by the intensity of the work, Durand offered Maslov a modest advance to quit his job and finish the book. The result is this extraordinary visual portrayal of Russian life and spirit.

Awash in alcohol from the first pages to the last, Siberia charts Maslov’s bleak path through the labyrinths of the Soviet system, from the desolate Siberian countryside, to military service with the Red Army in Mongolia, to the psychiatric hospital where he was admitted after his brother’s death. Drawn entirely in pencil on paper, the book’s nuanced gray tones document with unremitting clarity and delicate nuance the austere Siberian landscape, the bad vodka, the daily brawls, the cynicism and violence of life in Siberia, but also the perseverance and hope of those in this often neglected but fascinating part of the world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The backstory of this graphic novel may be as compelling as the book itself. Maslov, a Muscovite night watchman, handed a visiting French editor some pages from what became this book. Impressed, the editor offered Maslov an advance, enabling the middle-aged artist to finish the book and, for the first time in his life, live as a working artist. This book is the story of Maslov's life. Drawn entirely in soft, impressionistic pencil, it follows his upbringing in Siberia in the 1950s through his army conscription and service in Mongolia, an utterly absurd riff on the tragicomic life of a Soviet soldier in the '70s. These scenes are so strange, so dazed, that they take on a hallucinatory glow. It also tracks his descent into alcoholism and despair, followed by his slow ascent out of that chasm. At times the drawing is stiff and naïve, and the translation is spotty, but Maslov's wry, cracked voice always shines through the formal problems. His is a voice from history, and his pencil drawings, which sometimes seem to shift as you look at them, drives that home. Even at his most horrifyingly real, Maslov is a friendly confidant, waving at the audience from what feels like a distant planet.
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From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up—This autobiographical chronicle spans 30 years, beginning in 1971 with Maslov's days as a young student in Siberia. This bleak story of the Everyman is told in a style reminiscent of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich with its matter-of-fact descriptions of grim living conditions. Following school, Maslov is drafted into the army. His life as a soldier in Mongolia is retold with the same slow and methodical detachment used to describe tender scenes of his family life. After leaving the army, he takes up construction work and later enrolls in art school. Following the death of his brother, Maslov suffers a breakdown and is hospitalized after an alcoholic binge spurred on by depression. The events of his life are described in a plain manner, whether the author is depicting the marriage of a schoolmate or the death of a friend. His pencil drawings retain the feeling of sketches and are filled with gray shadows. At times, the people all look the same, underscoring a communal sensibility and the shared experience of life in isolated Siberia. Elsewhere, the faces take on an expressive detail that borders on the grotesque. Maslov dwells on the minutiae of his encounters with friends and acquaintances, and teens will be fascinated as his story slowly unfolds—Heidi Dolamore, San Mateo County Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 100 pages
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press (October 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933368039
• ISBN-13: 978-1933368030
• Product Dimensions: 11.6 x 8.3 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,627,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More than a sketchbook - the story of an incredible life., May 25, 2009

By 

Ian S. Greenleigh - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Siberia (Paperback)

Nikolai Maslov's Siberia unfolds as a series of brief, telling vignettes that portray the bleak misery and utter absurdity of life behind the Iron Curtain. A man laps spilled wine from a puddle on the floor of a pig sty. Nikolai is rejected from art school because his work does not "show the advantages of the Soviet way of life". To the contrary, the grayscale pencil sketches in Siberia should be enough to dispel any lingering revolutionary nostalgia or apologism. Gray like his dystopian homeland, Maslov's desolate landscapes and characters seem equally devoid of life. Nearly all who haunt Siberia's panels have resigned themselves to a vodka-induced complacency, and even Nikolai succumbs to this prevailing dispiritedness at times throughout the account.

Siberia is created in such a way that one wonders if the author had read any other graphic novels before penning his own. It is Maslov's apparent unfamiliarity with the genre and style that makes his memoir so unique; it is unblemished by the influence and clichés of his peers.



Like many, Nikolai seeks refuge in art and its creation. Yet an artist of his time and place must be an organ of the state, or keep his work to himself. Each sketch is pregnant with meaning, as is the very style of his work. Maslov chooses to portray the world of his youth in grim charcoal, the antithesis of the heroic, colorful celebrations he was urged to create--and this time he gets to show us.

That he survived to relate his story speaks to his thirst for life, and that we are so profoundly affected by it speaks to his abilities as an author and artist. The medium by which Maslov has chosen to share his reflections may be unique, but, sadly, the tragedy of the Soviet experience was shared by far too many.