Late 1950s. Four boys live in a Belarusian village: Naum (the narrator), the fighter Seryoga, the enterprising Timka, and the believer Mishka-Sack. The most amazing thing is that everything he asks God for really comes true…
1. Life is more incredible. Reading this autobiographical novel, it is not always possible to distinguish between fiction and truth. But in this case it doesn’t matter: what happens in “Lord, do it …” constantly proves that life is more incredible than any fiction. And also because Nim’s book is still art, a work of talent and fun. Usually they start with a story about childhood-adolescence-youth, but for Naum Nim, who served a term in the mid-1980s for human rights activities, this is already the third major thing.
2. The right world. Four boys live in a Belarusian village. This is the storyteller, “Yaurei (Jew. – Ed.) Naum”, the fighter and rebel Seryoga, the businessman and womanizer Timka, the believer, despite the atheism raging around, Mishka-Sack. The most amazing thing is that everything he asks God for really comes true … The end of the 1950s, not all the mines have exploded yet, the veterans are very young. The Soviet authorities are fooling with might and main, either limiting the sale of bread, or forcing them to bring a chicken from every yard in order to “catch up and overtake” America … But here’s the mystery – the world in which Nym’s heroes live is full of harmony and fun. Because everything in it is correct – the village lives a common life and has its own wise man, a just policeman Uncle Sasha, and its own holy fool and drinking doctor.
3. Not nostalgia, but way of life. But, unlike many memoirists, Naum Nim does not sigh for a lost paradise. He says something else: as long as there are ideas of good and bad in this world, this world stands still. As soon as the rules – and not only moral ones, but also the smallest ones relating to everyday life and just human relations – disappear, everything begins to collapse.
CORPUS, 375 p.