Iževské noci – Ar-Sergi Vjačeslav (2019)

The plot of the novel "Iževské noci" takes place in the 1990s in Ižkar/Iževsk, the capital of the Udmurt Republic, and in the Udmurt countryside. At the center of the narrative is an adaptation of a legend about the end of the golden age of the Udmurts (a period in Udmurt history within the multi-ethnic, multilingual, and tolerant Golden Horde and Kazan Khanate), the conquest of Udmurtia and the entire Kazan Khanate by Ivan the Terrible. The legend is told from the perspective of the conquered, depicting the massacre of the inhabitants and the flight of the survivors. The connection between the two stories is the Udmurt royal family – the main hero of the contemporary story is perhaps a descendant of this lineage – and the symbols of sacred power, which both the main hero and the Russian-Udmurt mafia seek to obtain. In addition to the corrupted Udmurt gangsters, the secondary characters include Udmurt students forced into prostitution by financial circumstances, who throughout the story find their true role as some sort of priestesses and initiators into the mystery. The book offers Czech readers a direct view of the current and historical society of the Udmurts, whose own voice has yet to be freely heard in the Czech lands and about whom we have either a distorted or no idea at all.