The Archivist's Story Book

Moscow, 1939. In the recesses of the infamous Lubyanka prison, a young archivist is sent to authenticate an unsigned story confiscated from one of the many political prisoners there. The writer is Isaac Babel. The great author of Red Cavalry is spending his last days forbidden to write, his final manuscripts consigned to the archivist, Pavel Dubrov, who will ultimately be charged with destroying them. The emotional jolt of meeting Babel face-to-face leads to a reckless decision: he will save the last stories of the author he reveres, whatever the cost.

From the margins of history, Travis Holland has woven a tale of the greatest power. Pavel’s private act of courage in the face of a vast bureaucracy of evil invigorates a life that had lost its meaning, even as it guarantees his almost certain undoing. A story of suspense, courage, and unexpected avenues of grace, The Archivist’s Story is ultimately an enduring tribute to the written word.

Publishers Weekly

Story writer Holland's impressive debut novel tracks the plight of disgraced literature teacher and reluctant archivist Pavel Dubrov, whose job, mainly, in 1939 Moscow, is to destroy books at Lubyanka prison, a dank, morbid depository for political prisoners where the boilers rarely work. When an unsigned story is discovered in a prison file, Pavel is ordered to authenticate its author, believed to be Isaac Babel, who is locked up at the prison. Haunted by his conversations with Babel and his love of Babel's work, Pavel steals the manuscript and hides it behind the crumbling bricks of his apartment's basement. (Later, he smuggles out a second manuscript.) He has little to lose: his young wife was killed in a train accident, his mentor is waiting to be carted off to prison for his unwillingness to walk the Party line, and his mother is succumbing to a brain tumor. All around him, literature is being destroyed, from the boxes of manuscripts he prepares for destruction to the page scraps his neighbor and lover Natalya uses to roll her cigarettes. Nearly everything and everyone in the novel is sad and broken, but Holland finds a kernel of hope in Pavel's mission. It's a melancholic and moving tribute to the written word. (May)