The Place of the Skull Novel

Aitmatov, a Kirghiz who writes fiction and drama in Russian, has tested the limits of discourse in the Soviet Union throughout his 30-year career. The publication last year of this stark novel was a triumph of glasnost; Time' s purchase of serial rights to the translation assures that it will be widely discussed in the West as well. The book combines wildly disparate plots about wolves displaced from their Central Asian habitat, a Russian "holy fool" in the great tradition who preaches a new Christianity and resists drug trafficking and animal slaughter, and the ordeal of an upright Kirghiz collective-farm shepherd. The Place of the Skull is Golgotha, and a Bulgakovian interview between Christ and Pilate lies at the heart of the novel. Strangely enough, it the novel howls with all the grief and rage of its she-wolf protagonist.