ИСТИНА

The novel The Kukotsky Enigma is a remarkable work of modern Russian writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya, for which she was awarded the Russian Booker Prize. This epic family novel focuses on the lives of several generations of the Kukotsky medical family through poetic language, presenting the habits, beliefs and fates of characters from multiple groups and regions of Soviet society. The author reflects deeply on interdisciplinary themes covering medicine, genetics, family, love, ethics, and race. Taking “enigma” as the entry point, characters constantly make ethical choices after enigmas and conflicts. Ulitskaya reconstructs the spatio-temporal structure of dream world after the heroine Yelena's illness with a brain text narrative, forming a heterogeneous space between life and death. This novel adopts a carnivalesque approach, and a series of narrative descriptions that occur in heterogeneous space are the answers and continuations of the spiritual life that the real protagonists have been searching for.