Dina Rubina - Petruska-szindróma

"His soul is now free, he has cut every thread that binds him to his past -
no longer a marionette."

The Petruska Syndrome is the masterpiece of one of the most widely known and sought-after Israeli authors writing in Russian, Dina Rubina - any of her books have sold more than 200,000 copies and are growing in popularity. Based on the number of copies sold, more than half a million people were interested in The Petrushka Syndrome in Russia alone, and libraries can only borrow it from a waiting list.
As in Lawrence Durrell's classic novel, The Alexandrian Four, Dina Rubina, using the voices of several characters, narrates the past of the brilliant, but heartbreakingly split-souled puppeteer and his airy, light, fragile wife from the past, twisted, charming, tragic and somewhat mystical, but in terms of the end result her happy love story, over which the woman's family heritage casts a dark and heavy shadow. The Petrushka Syndrome is a beautifully written symbolic novel about self-identity and creative creation, longing and losses - and last but not least: love.
Dina Rubina achieved the impossible - she created a mixture of three different genres. It combined a family crime novel, a psychological drama and a passionate love story. Moreover, the emotions depicted by the author stretch the boundaries of personality in this work as well. Man and puppet, puppeteer and rebel puppet, man as a puppet in the hands of the Creator, subject to the coercion of the inherited past? The author illuminates all levels of this multidimensional metaphor.
The "painting" of Rubina's text creator - which can be admired in its entirety in Iván Ildikó's sensitive and accurate translation - is, as always, outstanding: we could almost bite into it, we swallow with pleasure the fragrant, delicious air of the book.