“The Vegetarian Twenties” in Zakhar Prilepin’s the Monastery

In The Monastery, Prilepin’s political agenda recedes into the background and Prilepin the writer comes to the fore; politics is present in the novel only to lend creative integrity to the piece: politics is a derivative of time, while man arises from eternity. The Monastery offers a choice of alternative historic interpretations, each of them somewhat subjective, and encourages the readers to come to their own conclusions, much in the manner of Voltaire. © 2017 East View Information Services. All rights reserved.