“Filled with larger than life characters, good and bad, every page draws you into a world that we might think is terrifyingly unreal… yet we also know from recent history certainly isn’t. This is a compelling read, and Nick Taussig has absolutely nailed the background, the conditions, the people – and the dilemma of a man betrayed by the system, the authorities, the functionaries and even the weather itself… Recommended.”
Michael Stotter, Shotsmag
“I was hoping for another Stellar Stalinesque Story – and my God doesn’t Taussig deliver. In short, I loved The Distinguished Assassin. This is a must for anyone who loves a fallible hero – it’s a veritable vodka-soaked voyage of blood and redemption.”
The Book Boy
“I am extremely impressed and more pertinently astounded by this work. It is a novel of impeccably crafted prose. I have a keen interest in (or rather obsession with) style and technicality, perhaps reflected in my indubitable reverence of Thomas Mann, whom I believe possessed perfection in his technical craft of words. Taussig has reached a simplicity of putting words together, and when a writer finds this beauty, his efforts are surely rewarded because he knows his work is done, what lies on the paper before him has truth because it is art. It reminds me of Hemingway: no word is not needed, no word less meaningful than the next, and also brings to mind Foster Wallace, when he could be simple and spare his words just struck through, they were both masters in creating really true writing. Having read Taussig’s other books, this does feel like the Felix Krull of his career, rather than the Adrian Leverkuhn that it could have been, and I perhaps thought it might have been! Those are two of the greatest novels ever written but I am glad Taussig has created something so refreshingly pure and inventive, with just the right amount of investigation and finished in a clean fashion without delving into the purple or the introspective, all in the manner of the former as opposed to the latter example above. There are so many bits of his style I love, that are so simple and striking and show such maturity and understanding for how well words can work when a writer does indeed understand them, a lot of the chapter openings achieve this, just a random example ‘Summer. Morning. Again, for two months, it will not get dark, the days never-ending, the nights short and white.’ So little that says so much in these descriptive sentences. Choice stuff. Some of my favourite parts were in the camp, in the forest, Aleksei’s suffering in the first period of being there, before he infiltrates the thieves, the interactions, Taussig’s observations, human stuff, it’s all just fantastically handled, and so imaginative, as if we were there! The journey through the forest was amazing, and the period as assassin was some of the most tense gripping stuff. The theme of the novel still has not struck me fully, and I found myself reading a lot of metaphor in its subjects, most specifically Russia. But overall it came me as a novel on the theme of power, above and beyond the themes of love, suffering, loss, politics, only to surprise me half way through and become a novel on the theme of revenge, more so than murder, regret, forgiveness, and right and wrong. But it’s so much more than all these I think, and that’s what makes it great and it does actually astound in its true sense because the core of it will sit with me for some time, and I don’t feel I can sum up the theme of this work after a fresh reading. The same way Proust sits with you for the rest of your life and continues to ‘haunt’ you with its multifarious depths; it’s not just a novel about society, or homosexuality, or jealousy, or habit, it goes so much deeper into human nature. Proust’s novel is almost infinitely deep, and that’s what makes it such a great work of art, and I think in The Distinguished Assassin Taussig’s ability to surprise the reader so effortlessly has thrust his work beyond the reach of any tangible definitions, it leaves you thinking, and not lacking, and to plant an inquisitiveness in the reader is surely a great gift. Within Aleksei’s mind, or rather, upon his shoulder, as we are throughout, we are as confused in our conclusions about human nature, about our own morals, and about what we believe to be right and wrong in this world, as he is. Such a tragic and sad story is his life, yet this is not a depressing novel. It is a discerning and inquisitive novel, and yet very nonpartisan, it simply presents and steps back. Here you are, the facts, now make up your own mind. Aleksei asks himself is he a predator or a protector? We don’t know, we’re at a loss, and only try and find our way through the tragedy with him, learning quickly not to jump to conclusions too soon. He realises the futility of his academic exploits, or, rather, they are killed and drained from him, like a kosher carcass, and his flip to become a purely physical man is as apparent to him as it is to us; but he never questions himself, in the same way as he asks does he protect or does he attack, as to whether he is a creator or a destroyer, a builder or a demolisher, for this is a key motif, that he both takes away and gives back with the same hands, the hands which hold his guns also hold his hammers with which to lay floorboards, and create at the lakehouse and the monastery. He is playing god in the most basic of levels, more basic than the simple moral ones he castigates himself for. He is a man who is constantly trapped. Like the dice tattoo, he is a man between four walls. In prison, in the camp, in the cooler, in the forest, in a jealous rage, in the debt to carry out the kills, in his prison of silence to Natasha about his past, the prison of guilt about killing young Dimitri, and in the monastery. Even in his face to face with Shelomov at the end he is a prisoner of things passed. I think this, his being trapped throughout his entire life, this is what keeps the reader thinking – what is freedom?”
Paul Van Carter, author of Oil on Canvas
