In recent years, no other author has broken my heart like Anthony Marra. I read his first novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, about three or four years ago. It was one of those books that you wish will not end because you know you will never find any other words so beautiful. No other novel will be able to compare. I half-heartedly read other books after that until I found Marra’s second book, The Zsar of Love and Techno. Billing itself simply as stories, it is decidedly not just a collection of short stories. It is very much a cohesive novel written into stand alone stories. Once again, I am left wondering if any book can ever again impart so much magic for me.

The stories jump from various locations in Russia (mostly Kirovsk) to Grozny and the Chechen Highlands, beginning in 1937 and spanning through to outer space, the year unknown. There is an interesting connection via a painting in the first two stories and then by the middle of the third story, you begin to realize that all of the stories will have characters overlapping in some way and that this is perhaps not what you thought it would be at first. It slowly dawns on you that each story is a vital piece of the whole and that all of the stories will be linked by the painting.

The second linking device is the use of a mixed tape, made by one of the characters, but that also forms the organization of stories, as though each was a song. There is an A side, followed by an extended intermission in which we learn about two central characters and the origin of the tape–to be opened only in case of emergency, and then the side B stories do a lot of ends-tying. All stories, characters, and time periods converge so beautifully by the end of the second to last story. You see it coming and know you’ll weep but that does not make the resolution any less powerful.

The final story is the last end to be tied–Kolya must be the last person, Russian of course, the only human survivor of planetary nuclear holocaust. We know that his brother Alexi’s name will be the last human word and thought and it’s delivery is so poignant it cuts through the solar system, into the great beyond.

While I think the devices Marra confidently uses in all of his work are marks of literary accomplishment–shifting time, points of view, narrative voice, perfectly chosen imagery, diction, plot, overlap, etc–his real genius lies in making forgotten people profound. He humanizes people, places, and wars that most Americans, and world citizens alike, know nothing about. He then expresses through these people love so pure and heartrending, you can’t help but feel that these people could be you. He makes you care.

Like I said, I believed that I had been ruined forever from enjoying another book again after loving A Constellation of Vial Phenomena so very much. But this book has touched me again at my core. It is so extraordinary. Please, someone, give this man a gigantic grant so that he may continue to write and write and write…