posted on 05 Jan 2023

The Russian Interpreter by Michael Frayn

The Russian Interpreter, published in 1966, was Frayn’s second novel, following on from his award-winning debut, The Tin Men. Set in Khrushchev’s Soviet Union of the late 1950s, when talks of a thaw in the Cold War relationships with the West allowed some exchange and travel between East and West, the novel has a big slab of autobiography at its heart. Frayn himself spent time as an exchange student during this period and the sometimes detailed and graphic conjuring of the streets and buildings of Moscow attests to that. Speaking of his time there, Frayn described it like this in an interview with The Guardian in 2005:

“It was another world. Empty monumental prospects in the centre, tumbledown wooden houses on the outskirts; vainglorious slogans and glistening spittoons; the intensely characteristic smells of low-octane petrol and frying pirozhki. In the woods to the west of the city there were still the remains of trenches and shattered steel helmets, where the German advance was finally halted in 1941; in the streets were legless veterans scooting along in little home-made trolleys.”

But Frayn is a cunning and entertaining novelist and so this novel becomes a series of small mysteries, twists and turns, subterfuge, naivety and betrayal.

Research student, Paul Manning has a grant to spend time in the U.S.S.R and we join him as he’s starting to get fed-up with the gloom of daily life – although summer is on the way and he is at least able to walk the streets of the city talking with his one friend, the enigmatic Katya. Manning’s minder, Sacha, keeps a wary eye on his ward and seems to be always lurking somewhere in the background.

Manning is approached one day by an oddly dishevelled fellow-Brit, Gordon Proctor-Gould who claims to have found him out because he’s also a graduate of Paul’s university. Proctor-Gould asks Manning to take on the part-time role of interpreter for him as he pursues his never-quite-explained role as a sort of ‘cultural ambassador’, arranging exchange visits between Russia and the UK. Puzzled but ultimately happy for the part-time employment, Paul accepts the job.

But what Paul wants most of all is a girlfriend and, on a university outing, he falls in with the beautiful, confident and capricious Raya who seems open to a relationship but in reality, uses Manning to get close to Proctor-Gould. Raya effectively moves into P-G’s hotel room and begins to systematically steal his ornaments, tins of coffee and books.

It would be negligent of me to say much more about the plot because it would certainly spoil the reading experience for you but I’m happy to quote a review by the website Kirkus who put it this way:

“In spite of P-G's previous assurances, Manning has been used and never knows quite what the game is until it's over. Neither will the reader since without a single device, this intrigue is full of quirky, quixotic surprises and it will catch your curiosity and convert it into admiration.”

A new paperback edition of the book is available for well under £10 from Faber Books and can be ordered from your local independent bookshop.

 

Terry Potter

January 2023