The very book on which the film by Alexei Fedorchenko “Heavenly Wives” was shot. And Denis Osokin is the same author who wrote the script for the famous film Oatmeal. In short, a must read.
Denis Osokin, wanderer and storyteller
Writer Denis Osokin was made famous by cinema. In 2010, the film “Oatmeal”, based on his story directed by Alexei Fedorchenko, won the prize at the Venice Film Festival. And the cycle of his stories was awarded the literary prize “Debut”. And yet Osokin remains a writer “for the few.” His prose can be shocking: there are so many images in it, the purpose of which is unclear; people whose behavior is indecipherable; words, melodious, but incomprehensible. Yes, and these texts look unusual – either like ordinary prose, or some kind of cubes, or rows of words in a column – like poetry. But these columns are written in such a way that, having started reading, you, subordinate to the suddenly discovered rhythm, can no longer tear yourself away.
Osokin, an ethnographer and folklorist by profession, studied the culture of the peoples of the Volga region and, it seems, became a bit of a shaman himself. Only his rites are quiet. Reading them is like listening to a distant song in a forgotten language – about how the bride was buried, and the groom followed her into the kingdom of the dead, or about the heavenly wives of the Mari people, who are in no way inferior to earthly ones. “Heavenly Wives…” is the story that gave the title to both Osokin’s book and Alexei Fedorchenko’s new film. The film has already won the love of the guests of the Berlin Film Festival. But all the same, it is the book that gives real pleasure from the style of Osokin’s prose, its thin lacy verbal fabric.
Denis Osokin “Heavenly Wives of the Meadow Mari”
Eksmo, 432 p.