Asystole

From the first pages it becomes apparent that Asystole is a novel about love of life in its purest, instinctive and intimate form. It’s also a novel about human faith in its existence and a desire to experience this love. Author Oleg Pavlov places his character – a boy who grows to be a man and is clearly personified by the writer’s own outlook on life – in impossible and familiar circumstances, impossible not to relate to.

An adult is shaped in childhood. Chaotic, anxious and at the same time withdrawn narration seems to have no direction and no resolution. Except that the life of the people, who are in fact children of a broken destiny, is real and not much needs to be said to make it our own. Laconic and ‘to the point’ observations of Pavlov’s protagonist as he goes, are chilling at times. They pierce through flesh right to the bone – the quality only the naked truth can have.

Asystole is moreover about the by-stander effect, about a disconnected and malfunctioning society and a struggle of one not to merge into the faceless mass of many. Modern, deeply thought through and heartfelt, this novel is an examination of the physics of human soul. Pavlov’s Universe has a special arrangement – if it was up to him, humans wouldn’t be allowed in it, for the privilege of being human requires living up to the title.

Oleg Pavlov

Born in 1970 in Moscow, Oleg Pavlov is a critically acclaimed award winning author of several books with a social and personal theme in their core. His trademark is the decontamination of the truth about life and the preciousness of our time on this planet. Use life wisely; live to love, live to love humanely, with the dedication of a saint – this is the message the author sends out into the world from the pages of his novels.

Oleg Pavlov’s military background and lessons he learned while being drafted and serving in most impossible places where he witnessed heart wrenching events, met forgotten people with forgotten souls, is the motive of his narrative – immediate, sharp, absolute.

Pavlov’s career in the army had to end when he was discharged following a medical diagnosis of mental instability. The tag meant the end of Pavlov’s prospects for any respectable future. Having worked as a janitor, he quickly realized that his life was a palette he could draw from, and so he did.

His personal journey resulted in a literary debut in 1994 with Military Apologue which was recognized by the Booker Prize among the best six novels of the year.

A climbing line of success followed this first publication of his - Oleg Pavlov authored many novels, articles and essays on most burning subjects related to Russian social dynamics and development. Today, Pavlov is a well known and celebrated author in the Russian modern literature, an intriguing author and a literary phenomenon of the great caliber.