Dua for an Infidel
Novel by Egana Djabbarova
Novel by Egana Djabbarova
ORIGINAL TITLE: Дуа за неверного
ORIGINAL PUBLISHER: New Literary Observer, 2025
128 PAGES
ORIGINAL PUBLISHER: New Literary Observer, 2025
128 PAGES
ENGLISH SAMPLE AVAILABLE
“My brother aspired to masculinity like a flower bending toward the sun. He posted photos of his toned arms and torso, shared posts about workouts, push-ups, and ways to build muscle fast. He was exactly what a Russian man should be: strong, quick to throw down, ready for battle.”
A fragmented portrait of the narrator’s estranged half-brother that gradually reveals, like a double exposure, the contours of late-1990s and early-2000s Russia.
On the narrator’s seventh birthday, an unknown woman arrives at the family apartment, holding the hand of a twelve-year-old boy. Sergey, the narrator soon learns, is her half-brother, born from her father’s extramarital affair. Too young to understand what separates them, the children quickly learn to love one another.
As Sergey grows older, he drifts away from the future their father had imagined for him, drawn instead to street life, gambling, alcohol and a vague longing for dignity and heroism. He abandons his studies, takes construction jobs, and eventually russifies his name in his passport to conceal his non-Russian origins.
Piecing together his short life through fragments, distorted memories and internet traces, the narrator reconstructs her brother’s tragic fate alongside that of a country in upheaval. Dua for an Infidel is a sister’s love letter and an elegy for the lost children of post-Soviet Russia, where the “dua” – a personal Muslim prayer – translates both a literary form and an attempt to pray someone back into existence through language.
On the narrator’s seventh birthday, an unknown woman arrives at the family apartment, holding the hand of a twelve-year-old boy. Sergey, the narrator soon learns, is her half-brother, born from her father’s extramarital affair. Too young to understand what separates them, the children quickly learn to love one another.
As Sergey grows older, he drifts away from the future their father had imagined for him, drawn instead to street life, gambling, alcohol and a vague longing for dignity and heroism. He abandons his studies, takes construction jobs, and eventually russifies his name in his passport to conceal his non-Russian origins.
Piecing together his short life through fragments, distorted memories and internet traces, the narrator reconstructs her brother’s tragic fate alongside that of a country in upheaval. Dua for an Infidel is a sister’s love letter and an elegy for the lost children of post-Soviet Russia, where the “dua” – a personal Muslim prayer – translates both a literary form and an attempt to pray someone back into existence through language.
A fearless, great book
— Elena Kostyuchenko,
Novaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta