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Ararat
First of a series of novels about Soviet Russia. The theme of improvisation, which I introduce here, reflected my own sense, still, that in writing a novel I was on a high wire and ready to fall off, since I didn't consider myself a traditional novelist, and still don't.
The TLS asked me to review an Anthology of Armenian Poetry, edited by Diana der Hovanessian. I fell in love with the poetry, and was moved by the tragic history of Armenia. This was one starting point for this novel; the other was Pushkin's 'It sails. Where shall we sail?...' The last line of his poem 'Autumn'.
The TLS asked me to review an Anthology of Armenian Poetry, edited by Diana der Hovanessian. I fell in love with the poetry, and was moved by the tragic history of Armenia. This was one starting point for this novel; the other was Pushkin's 'It sails. Where shall we sail?...' The last line of his poem 'Autumn'.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1983
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170 people want to read
About the author
D.M. Thomas
86 books84 followersD.M. Thomas was born in Cornwall in 1935. After reading English at New College, Oxford, he became a teacher and was Head of the English Department at Hereford College of Education until he became a full-time writer. His first novel The Flute-Player won the Gollancz Pan/Picador Fantasy Competition. He is also known for his collections of verse and his translation from the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova.
He was awarded the Los Angeles Fiction prize for his novel The White Hotel, an international bestseller, translated into 30 languages; a Cholmondeley award for poetry; and the Orwell Prize for his biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He lives in his native Cornwall, England.
He was awarded the Los Angeles Fiction prize for his novel The White Hotel, an international bestseller, translated into 30 languages; a Cholmondeley award for poetry; and the Orwell Prize for his biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He lives in his native Cornwall, England.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
January 11, 2012
This book is not just a book. It is physical proof that I have a compulsive book buying problem. I bought this a few years ago based solely on the title and I did not even pause, stop or blink before I shelled out the small £2 asking price nor did I bother to read the back cover to see what the book was actually about. And there lies the rub.
What was I expecting?
A travel narrative or travel history of an area (Armenia and NE Turkey) with which I am familiar and would like to have spent more time but never got the chance.
What did I get?
A vastly inexplicable yet oddly engaging novel which traversed time periods and geographical locations and generally managed to befuddle and befuse the bejesus out of me.
(And now, because Dan requested it...)This book, for me, was as random as being run over by a joy riding polar bear. It could have only been made to seem comparatively less random if the polar bear had then reversed over me to check I was dead and then ridden off wearing my head as a hat. So there you go.
This book had the word-scent and taste of something written a long time ago but really it was only written in the early 80s. The author may in fact have been Paul Auster before Paul Auster was Paul Auster or even realised what being Paul Auster was all about. Post modernism with a dash of nostalgia. There is a lot of improvised poetry in this book (quatraines dontchaknow) and the book itself is largely a demonstration of the worth of improvisation as a skill to dazzle and entertain, as a literary pursuit and as a way of life. After all, do we not improvise every day? Set in Russia, America and Armenia, it is the mysterious Mount Ararat which provides a linking theme between all three stories, although to be honest I'm still not really sure why. After all this I still don't know enough about Armenia but I do know I still want to go there.
What was I expecting?
A travel narrative or travel history of an area (Armenia and NE Turkey) with which I am familiar and would like to have spent more time but never got the chance.
What did I get?
A vastly inexplicable yet oddly engaging novel which traversed time periods and geographical locations and generally managed to befuddle and befuse the bejesus out of me.
(And now, because Dan requested it...)This book, for me, was as random as being run over by a joy riding polar bear. It could have only been made to seem comparatively less random if the polar bear had then reversed over me to check I was dead and then ridden off wearing my head as a hat. So there you go.
This book had the word-scent and taste of something written a long time ago but really it was only written in the early 80s. The author may in fact have been Paul Auster before Paul Auster was Paul Auster or even realised what being Paul Auster was all about. Post modernism with a dash of nostalgia. There is a lot of improvised poetry in this book (quatraines dontchaknow) and the book itself is largely a demonstration of the worth of improvisation as a skill to dazzle and entertain, as a literary pursuit and as a way of life. After all, do we not improvise every day? Set in Russia, America and Armenia, it is the mysterious Mount Ararat which provides a linking theme between all three stories, although to be honest I'm still not really sure why. After all this I still don't know enough about Armenia but I do know I still want to go there.
August 16, 2017
The fourth novel from sex-obsessed Russophile DM Thomas is a curious frame tale (and frame tale within frame tale) concerning a repugnant Russian writer and his antics on a sea liner who is working on his own version of Pushkin’s Egyptian Nights (included as the centrepiece of the book). The story commences with Rozanov, another repugnant Russian writer who, at the request of his blind lay, improvises a tale about a sickly writer who meets various curious characters such as an ex-Nazi butcher (whose dealings are outlined in unpleasant detail), a nurse who concedes to be bedded, an interviewer, and a woman named Donna who might be to old for the writer to bed. Inside this improvised tale is the tale of the Italian improvisatore in Pushkin’s story, lending the novel the illusion of symmetry. An oddly breezy, at times oddly repugnant, intellectual riff of a fairly diverting nature.
October 9, 2008
A matroshka of a story that floats through time and space, "Ararat" is the first book in a series by DM Thomas (of which I read the fourth book, the political satire "Summit," many years ago). It has all the hallmarks of a D M Thomas novel - his fascination with the psychology of cruelty and the hysteresis of relationships - but at is heart is an homage to a century and a half of Russian literature.
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June 17, 2020An attempt at an intricate structure that spans times and nations tinged with old-Europe nostalgia... Normally, shit like this is my bread and butter, but somehow Ararat didn't work for me. This is especially disappointing given the high regard in which I hold The White Hotel. There were moments of sinister beauty that I admired, for sure, and maybe if I knew more about Pushkin I could appreciate the narrative more, but for now, it's a pass.
Read
April 25, 2018I love Love, and the child of Love, the love-child. I am in love with Love. Love is the centre of my life. Love acts, and Love sings. Love is the Most Beautiful Lady, and has a dark ambiguous cunt. I am the child of Love, and her master. Love fills my days with boredom, and gives my nights moments of rapture. Love is laying me waste, but I want her devastation. I love Love when she combs her red-gold hair, and when she whispers shameful phrases in the dark. I love her when I am sick, and she ministers to me. I love her when she presses the golden swan to her slim body; and when she broods tenderly over the Christ child. I love her when she sits naked on a rock, her hair in strands from the sea water, her left hand resting palm-upward on her sturdy thighs – whether to give or to take, we don’t know.
What happens if you throw Alexander Pushkin, Milan Kundera, and a traditional Armenian story teller into a blender?
What happens if you throw Alexander Pushkin, Milan Kundera, and a traditional Armenian story teller into a blender?
September 13, 2018
I was expecting so much more from this than sexist, misogynist drivel. Don't be fooled by the title or the author's poetic 'starting point' for writing. You will learn nothing about Russian poetry or the rich and beautiful Armenian culture that you don't already know. Would that Thomas didn't 'incarnate' his distasteful 'visions' with language and call it literature. Who endorses this crap?
May 24, 2011
post modern hyper cool
May 2, 2012
Gorsh, I read this a long time ago. Published 1983. All I remember is that I liked it.
June 29, 2018
I always forget how good DM Thomas is until I reread him !
August 29, 2016
Terrific, unusual book, in three minds with at least three stories. The writing is delightful-fabulous.
Read
December 1, 2017twisted b/w dream and reality. Odd story - it didn't rest well with me about the old man and young woman
December 25, 2013
I found the narrative slightly confusing...
October 26, 2015
like a mature Wes Anderson, but occasionally in a good way
September 17, 2016
Fascinating and strange. Would have rather had it last 500 pages instead of 200.
January 7, 2020
Thomas has this way with language that makes it seemingly abstract, even when what is written is clear and precise. There's a dreamy quality to it. I like the shifts of focus from the innocuous external detail, to the internal dilemmas at play.
It reads like a much older work and this goes some way to explaining some of the bad reviews I've seen of his work. He seems to have a penchant for the replication of a time period that is uniquely at odds with the now. The down side is that it isn't a time too long distant from our own.
Its interesting what a difference a few decades makes. The way characters treat and think about women has changed. Classic works are forgiven. Modern novels about the past tend to be revisionist or avoid the problematic. Thomas doesn't shy away from the real. Doesn't tread lightly when it comes to constructing his male protagonists.
It is a mistake to assume it mirrors his own mind, which is what a lot of reviews have done. I don't go in for all that medium is the message nonsense. The author exists, but is separate from the work. The work is a piece of clockwork, I judge it only by how well it works. Not for whatever extra complications it lacks.
Anyway. Ararat is sequences that take an unfiltered look at sex and death. It's a novel build on and around the theme of improvisation.
The author has said that it was only at the end of this novel that the inspiration for the next appeared; and so on, until he had a collection of novels. I'm hoping they are like Russian dolls. Partly because of the influence of Russian literature on them... And in this novel, I think a little of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. But also, my hope is that they fit together but are uniquely individual.
I intend to read them all at any rate, that's just a hope. I have them on my shelf now. So, what more of an endorsement do you need? If it is good enough for me to commit to reading the rest... Go try them out. Or at the least, read White Hotel. I don't waste my time reading bad books. If I hate it, I move on.
It reads like a much older work and this goes some way to explaining some of the bad reviews I've seen of his work. He seems to have a penchant for the replication of a time period that is uniquely at odds with the now. The down side is that it isn't a time too long distant from our own.
Its interesting what a difference a few decades makes. The way characters treat and think about women has changed. Classic works are forgiven. Modern novels about the past tend to be revisionist or avoid the problematic. Thomas doesn't shy away from the real. Doesn't tread lightly when it comes to constructing his male protagonists.
It is a mistake to assume it mirrors his own mind, which is what a lot of reviews have done. I don't go in for all that medium is the message nonsense. The author exists, but is separate from the work. The work is a piece of clockwork, I judge it only by how well it works. Not for whatever extra complications it lacks.
Anyway. Ararat is sequences that take an unfiltered look at sex and death. It's a novel build on and around the theme of improvisation.
The author has said that it was only at the end of this novel that the inspiration for the next appeared; and so on, until he had a collection of novels. I'm hoping they are like Russian dolls. Partly because of the influence of Russian literature on them... And in this novel, I think a little of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. But also, my hope is that they fit together but are uniquely individual.
I intend to read them all at any rate, that's just a hope. I have them on my shelf now. So, what more of an endorsement do you need? If it is good enough for me to commit to reading the rest... Go try them out. Or at the least, read White Hotel. I don't waste my time reading bad books. If I hate it, I move on.
February 11, 2025
Although I am a fan of this author, this book was nothing more than a pale horse. A pale horse that was beyond resuscitation. It trudged without any life.
September 2, 2025
I was super confused because of the structure but once I think it was very inventive. I wish I could find people who read it to talk about it because I really need a second opinion
January 18, 2022
I got this book with the expectation of learning more about Armenia, only to be disappointed by the author's misogynistic, Russophilic and occasionally racist tropes.
March 9, 2025
A strange, and, at times, repellent book by a gifted writer.
Ararat is not like any work I've come across before. I'll not be too downhearted if I never see its like again.
DM Thomas is a wonderful poet, at times the language of Ararat is simply beautiful but this work is confused and confusing.
I had been moved and shocked by his earlier work The White Hotel, which I would thoroughly recommend. But I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.
Ararat is not like any work I've come across before. I'll not be too downhearted if I never see its like again.
DM Thomas is a wonderful poet, at times the language of Ararat is simply beautiful but this work is confused and confusing.
I had been moved and shocked by his earlier work The White Hotel, which I would thoroughly recommend. But I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.
March 17, 2022
Just sensational, one of my favourite novels of all time.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews