Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
2021
Max Tarnavskii is a young writer once recognized by the young audience for his debut novel about young counterculture but then scathingly criticized for his third novel "Where the Wind Is", — a philosophical parable about a hermit living in a lighthouse by the sea. Having fallen off the readers’ radar, he suffers through his inability to create any further. It’s the second half of the 2010s, Kyiv. On the New Year’s Eve Max gets an offer from Alisa, a first-year student, to go on a tour with a young rock band as a gonzo journalist to revive his counterculture icon status. Max balks at first, but an unexpected brawl on Facebook in which Max is reminded about his passivity during the Maidan and his uncertain ideological views in the days of the ATO and the war, and a critical review of Max’s new novel outline from his literary agent urge Tarnavskii to accept the offer after all. The rock band he joins for a tour from Western to Eastern Ukraine has turned up to be an inept group trip planner, so the protagonist has to take up the role of a leader capable of saving the band from a total fiasco. Traveling with the teenage freshmen becomes the young writer’s road to adulthood, forgiveness, and an attempt to forgive his own mistakes of youth in particular. Just to earn his living, Max agrees to perform with the rockers while on tour, flies in the face of his creative fears, and is forced to redefine himself as a writer once again. He faces the dangers of concert disruptions, the band split up, public disapproval, and threats of physical violence. Ability to write on the road becomes his only way to save and revive his own self, stand up to his hidden weaknesses, reconsider his role in a society that undergoes a war. A post-tour trip with Alisa to her grandmother who lives in a village on the liberated from the occupation territories becomes Tarnavskii’s hope for a renewal. On this trip Max gets a chance to full recovery, because in Tarnavskii’s mind these are the parts, where he will find the sand bar with the lighthouse where the hermit from his novel "Where the Wind Is" lives.
