Book Review
The Last of the Vostyachs
by Diego Marani
by Luke May, Apr 2013
In 1942 Hitler paid the Finnish leader Marshal Mannerheim a surprise visit for his 75th birthday, leaving the national hero reticent and embarrassed. One wonders what Diego Marani’s fictional acolyte of Finnish patriotism in The Last of the Vostyachs, Professor Aurtova, would have thought of a similar visit, for it’s unlikely a more insidious, bigoted character exists elsewhere today. Head of Finno-Ugric languages at the University of Helsinki, Aurtova is on a quest to destroy the last surviving language of an ancient, shamanic tribe that connects Finland to pre-Columbian North Americans. An academic triviality? Perhaps, but Marani strives to wind a plot round the issue of ethnic nationalism and hits the mark.
Ivan, the last of the Vostyachs, wakes to find that the Russian soldiers who killed his father and kept him prisoner in a Siberian work camp for 20 years have left. He runs into the woods and starts speaking again, quickly realising that he can commune with animals through speech and music. This concept of unity between nature and language doesn’t exist in English, and may be clearer in the original Italian, but Marani doesn’t slip into banal fantasy. After all, this is an author who invented his own language – Europanto – and whose primary concern is how international understanding rests with a shared language.
Aurtova has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. His brutal cunning and misogyny leave us more interested in the emotional complexities of his ex-wife, Margareeta, and the Russian linguist, Olga, who discovers Ivan in a village and sends him to Helsinki to appear at the Congress of Finno-Ugric languages. What follows is part mystery, part Scandinavian-noir, with a splash of 12 Monkeys. Published to acclaim in Italy 10 years ago, and last year in the UK, this one doesn’t trump Marani’s New Finnish Grammar, but has all the same concerns, albeit in a different uniform.
Luke May is a freelance writer.
