The Tolstoy Estate
Page 34
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m certain.’
‘All right then,’ she says and, still shivering a little, walks on alone down the tunnel of shade.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Tolstoy Estate is the love child of War and Peace and a much less well-known book: Journey Among Warriors (1943) by Ève Curie – an account of Curie’s journey through several theatres of the Second World War, including a visit to Yasnaya Polyana in January 1942, just three weeks after its liberation from the Germans. In particular, I was inspired by Curie’s discovery that during the six-week occupation, many of those present – Soviets and Germans alike – had been acutely conscious of the site’s cultural, ideological and even metaphysical significance as the former home of the author of Russia’s great national epic of resistance to a foreign invader.
For the surgical scenes in the book I relied on The German Army Medical Corps in World War II (1999), edited by Alex Buchner, and two identically titled memoirs by British military surgeons: Surgeon at War (1955) by J.C. Watts and Surgeon at War (1979) by Stanley Aylett. In Deadly Combat (2000) by Gottlob Herbert Bidermann provided brutal accounts not only of warfare on the eastern front but also of Bidermann’s captivity in the Soviet Union after the war. For insights into Soviet cultural and political life in the interwar years I drew on Nadezhda Mandelstam’s memoir Hope Against Hope (1970). Katerina’s early writing career is modelled on that of the revolutionary author Alexandra Kollontai, as described by Gregory Carleton in Sexual Revolution in Bolshevik Russia (2004). The excerpt from War and Peace on page 78 is from the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (2007). The sculpture that Katerina describes on page 286 is Giuseppe Sanmartino’s ‘Cristo Velato’ (1753), which can be found in the Chapel of Sansevero in Naples. For the sake of clarity, I have somewhat simplified the unit structure and system of ranks used by the German army late in 1941.
During my research for the book, several people generously donated their expertise, including Dr Tess Abbott (emergency caesarean section), Dr Paul Goggin (anaesthesia), Anne and August Tischlinger (German), Anna Kouznetsova (Russian), Bernardo Foth (Franconian tongue-twisters), and historian Jack Radley (Russian mud). James Greentree catapulted Norbert Ritter from a place of obscurity in my first novel to a bona fide character in this one.
I am also indebted to my test readers: Brad Clingin, Brigid Foard, Max Kelly, Lucy Marshall and my mother, Rosemary Thomas. Susan Gray has been a dear friend and shrewd editorial advisor throughout. Julia Stiles and Madeleine James were wise editors at the end, and Scott Forbes a sharp-eyed proofreader. HarperCollins’ commissioning editor Catherine Milne took an early punt on the book and cheered it all the way to the finishing line.
Thanks is also due to the Australia Council for the Arts for their funding of The Tolstoy Estate in the form of an Arts Development grant. The financial support was useful; the vote of confidence precious.
Lastly, I’d like to thank Jackie Bowe, who supported me financially and emotionally throughout the writing of this book and whose faith in it never flagged. In fair weather and foul, she was and indeed remains an irreplaceable friend.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STEVEN CONTE’s debut novel, The Zookeeper’s War, won the inaugural Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction. It was also shortlisted for the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book and for the 2007 Christina Stead Award for Fiction. The novel was published in the UK and Ireland and translated into Spanish.
For more information visit
stevenconte.com
ALSO BY STEVEN CONTE
The Zookeeper’s War
COPYRIGHT
Fourth Estate
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First published in Australia in 2020
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Copyright © Steven Conte 2020
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Cover design by Catherine Casalino
Cover image: landscape © Lee Avison / Trevillion Images; soldier © CollaborationJS / Trevillion Images