Writer Ilya Mamaev-Niles announced himself in 2023 when his novel "Year of Porn" about a thoughtful and vulnerable young man in provincial realities was called "one of the most important Russian novels of the year" and compared to Sergey Davydov's "Springfield." This spring, Polyandria No Age published the writer's new novel. The author, who grew up in Yoshkar-Ola and now lives between Russia and the USA. "Only the Headlights" is an atmospheric road book, whose hero and heroine travel through the European part of Russia after 2022. Sorin Brut read "Only the Headlights" and saw in it a psychological portrait of people who grew up with Kerouac's "On the Road" with a promising America, but found themselves in the war years in Russia. Collage: Lyalya Bulanova / "Novaya Gazeta Europe." Forty-year-old Yan Troyanovsky travels in a camper and lives on wedding photographer fees. He met his beloved at one of the weddings: thirty-year-old Kira is an HR manager and a runaway bride (her "relationship out of habit" almost turned into a "marriage without love"). The heroine will soon leave her IT company for the same reasons: it's unbearable to live a false life. They are heading to the sea – to freedom, to another reality, where it will be less suffocating. The book could have been built around their melancholic romantic journey. But their past life is not going to let the characters go easily. Kira learns about her pregnancy from her ex-fiancé, and the couple seems to decide on an abortion. But the circles of bureaucratic hell and other obstacles from the state of "traditional values" can change the minds of even more stable people. Photo: Anatoly Maltsev / EPA. The reader begins to think that the novel is about this, but the plot sharply changes direction again. This is a metaphorical technique, quite appropriate for a time of total uncertainty: a fragmented plot masks a plotless prose. How the characters talk to each other and to themselves is more important than their actions. Although all their movements are also metaphorical. Yan and Kira rush around the country, but to little effect. It resembles the buzzing of mosquitoes that have flown into the car and are unsuccessfully looking for a crack in the slightly open window (the author focuses on them more than once). The confusion of the characters is the main feeling of the novel. Kerouac's "On the Road" has a lot of hope, freedom, and disappointment. In Mamaev-Niles' novel, the first is crushed in the past off-screen, the second is almost an illusion, but there is plenty of disappointment. The novel cannot be called realistic, but the dialogues are even hyper-realistic. "Mamaev-Niles recreates the conversational speech of a generation, minimizing literary convention (earlier it was more of a dramatic technique, but it entered prose). Those who appreciate such snapshots of life in art will probably love the book. But lovers of economical texts, where there are no superfluous words, will surely find much redundant. The flow of everyday and disjointed speech, full of digressions, thoughts get stuck and break off halfway. It is not so easy to extract the worldview of the characters from all this (although they themselves hardly understand themselves well). However, such dialogues accurately reflect the depressive mess in their heads. Mamaev-Niles does not let you forget about the cause. The war seeps into the text – sometimes with army vehicles on the highway, sometimes with a fellow traveler who is a veteran, and the cafe "Vkusno i tochka" feels like the restless ghost of a prematurely deceased being. Yan is always focused on the future. In his youth, he set goals, like a successful career or "finding a wife," and achieved them, but he didn't seem to be satisfied. Now Yan is wary of his dreams – they are fraught with disappointment. What he is striving for is not entirely clear, but he cannot stop. Movement drowns out the painful question: "Why?" The characters drink "black coffee from "Twin Peaks."" Descriptions of gas stations echo American art, which loves this type of location. "You know, it's all like in American movies," said Kira. "Hotel, bathrobes, view of the night city. Do you know what else they do in movies?" she asked. "What?" "Go to the bar." "Okay, let's go to the bar." "Maybe I don't want to go to the bar." Photo: Alamy / Vida Press. Try to figure out where your own desires and meanings are, and where they are unconsciously perceived from the outside. Yan unsubscribed from all media long ago. Reels are still left, but while watching them, he experiences "the same thing that made him stop following the news." Kira reacts sharply to attempts to tell her about the sinfulness of abortion – just like to her mother's intrusive advice. "Get out of my head!" she declares to the priest, and these words sound like the heroine's slogan. Both Yan and Kira feel the pressure of reality – they may be trying to escape from it. The characters often talk about meanings, questioning them every time. Common ideas about a normal life and marriage have let Kira down. The company she worked for also does not meet her standards. But perhaps the best metaphor for the dominance of fakes is the Bruges Embankment in Yoshkar-Ola, which Yan contemplates. Ex-head of Mari El, Markelov, built gingerbread-like buildings in various old European styles here – "Pseudo-palaces, pseudo-temples, pseudo-houses." A kingdom of simulacra: "Find ten people who consider a mop the highest purpose of human life, and it will become true. There is no truth in nature. It's an agreement. Yan saw despair in the man's eyes. Nothing made sense. Everyone lied." The generation of the book's characters was formed under the cross-influence of late Soviet and American cultures. For both, the idea of "finding their purpose" was important. In a space with an authoritarian tradition, it was easily perceived as an obligation. In 2022, people like Kira and Yan discovered that they were being prepared for life in a completely different Russia, where long-term planning and gradual development are possible. Photo: Anatoly Maltsev / EPA. Meaning for them is a familiar support (Kira seeks stability above all) and a necessary element of navigation (Yan seeks direction). But the conceptual field has collapsed into a crisis. The Russian government has done a lot for this, juggling deliberately vague ideas, using them as a multifunctional weapon against society. Then there is the rise of populism worldwide, the rampage of conspiracy theories, and finally, the coexistence in one feed of many incompatible concepts, which sometimes look more like part of a business strategy than beliefs. There is a feeling that the space of meanings has been captured by cynics and fanatics. The pressure is also created by the authoritarian presentation of information widespread in the Russian-speaking environment (in the spirit of, if you are not with us, then you are wrong). The war has only exacerbated it. The novel often features discussions about how no one should be judged. There is also this line: "Whatever we do, it's all wrong. We are always not like that. We think wrong. We do something wrong. Everyone is right, but we are not." Ilya Mamaev-Niles. Photo from his personal VK page. Often, upbringing and socialization create an authoritarian inner voice, which tries to fit a person into every value system and condemns them for non-compliance. As a result, any concept becomes oppressive. The prevalence of meta-irony in the Russian-speaking segment of the internet looks like a reaction to all this. But such anti-crisis adaptation is more characteristic of the younger generation than Yan and Kira. Throughout the novel, the characters are looking for a way out of the crisis and, in the end, perhaps, they find it. At the same time, "Only the Headlights" carefully avoids imposing meaning on the reader. On the one hand, this is consistent and appreciated by many. On the other hand, those who like to argue with the author's ideas and mentally develop them are likely to feel a conceptual vagueness in the novel. "Only the Headlights" is good for another reason. It subtly reflects the psychological state of young people who have been run over by the "new normality." And it does so, as it were, "from the inside." There will be many more books about the psychology of wartime in the Russian Federation, but to show it the way Mamaev-Niles does – hot on the heels and with un-aged feelings – can only be done now.