Casarosa (novel)

The action of the novel "Kazaroza" takes place in an unnamed Ural city, which means Perm , in two temporary layers.

1920 year Recaptured by Kolchak a year ago, singer Zinaida Kazaroza comes on tour. Svechnikov, a former fighter of the Red Army invites her to speak at the Esperanto Club. During the speech, Casarosa dies. Svechnikov begins an investigation. He is assisted by Vagin, an employee of a local newspaper who was also at the concert.

1975 year . Svechnikov arrives in a city in which he has not been for a long time, and meets Vagin. Aged heroes recall the story of the murder.

As the author said:

... the novel "Kazarosa" was born from my endless folders with extracts from newspapers and archival documents, in which, it seems to me, I managed to catch that difficult-to-detect substance, usually called the "spirit of the times." <...> But all realities are absolutely respected. I am always responsible for the accuracy of historical details in my novels, be it the details of Mongolian ethnography or the details of the existence of the Esperanto language in Russia in the twenties ^[1] .

The prototype of the novel Kazaroza was the author’s cousin - Bella Georgievna Shensheva , who really was a singer and performed under the pseudonym Zinaida Kazaroza (translated from Spanish as “pink house”) ^[2] . She was familiar with Alexander Blok , Mikhail Kuzmin , Osip Mandelstam . In 1929, she committed suicide in Berlin . Esperanto Yuzefovich became interested in the language back in 1981 , when he attended a meeting of Esperantists near Miass . The Esperanto Club described in the novel really existed in Perm in the 1920s .

The story " Club" Espero " " - the first version of the novel - was released in 1990 . In 2002, Yuzefovich reworked it and released it under the name "Casarose".

Criticism noted in the novel superbly recreated signs of the time, the important role of the scene, an elegant detective intrigue. But the detective in the novel is an entourage against which more serious problems arise. The critic Lev Danilkin wrote:

The main feeling, note, sense of "Kazaroza" is disappointment. The historian’s disappointment at the inability to compile a fragment of the past from “right” words. Disappointed in the possibility of the existence of a universal language, in conspiracy theory. Disappointment from the ridiculous murder-1920, and from the "lack of meeting" -1975 ^[3] .

In 2003, the book reached the finals of a prestigious literary contest - the Russian Booker Prize.

At the request of Channel One , the three-part film Kazarosa was shot. The script is written by Yuzefovich, but it is very different from the novel, there is another denouement and another killer. It was supposed to demonstrate the series in the fall of 2005 , but the start of the show was delayed first on February 20 , and then - due to the high ratings of broadcasts from the Winter Olympics - on February 27, 2006 .

• Leonid Yuzefovich: “I am a storyteller”
• Leo Danilkin. “Leonid Yuzefovich. Casarosa
• Elena Ivanitskaya. “Everything is connected with everything”
• Tatyana Sotnikova. "Vain detective"
• Marina Abasheva. "Secrets of Leonid Yuzefovich"
• Exclusive Interview with Leonid Yuzefovich
• Interview with Leonid Yuzefovich about “Kazaroz” (inaccessible link)