Daughter of Night by Lydia Obukhova
Daughter of Night is such a 70s novel.
Loosely based on the mythology of Adam and his first wife, Daughter of Night follows Lilith, Odam (Adam), Heva (Eve), and an alien from a far-off planet aware of its eventual and inevitable entropic destruction that is searching the far reaches of existence for a suitable replacement planet while also contemplating the very nature of consciousness.
Yup.
Rather than a literal first man and first woman, Odam and Lilith are merely members of a hunter/gatherer society on a much younger earth. While lacking a traditional hook, I enjoyed these stolid, strengthening chapters. Again, it might be the anthropologist in me, but I was engrossed watching deep-seated beliefs of what we know to be impossible; confusion over the very simple; tribal rituals and the tribe’s understanding of those rituals.
Even while Lilith and Odam—cousins forbidden to marry—elope, laughing, into the darkness, the tension mounts. Knowledge of the mythic Lilith character aside, they’re obviously a bad match. Odam is traditional, and only his, let’s be honest, lust, of Lilith drives him to do the unthinkable. Meanwhile, Lilith has always lingered over the unknown, hunger in her eyes.
We get a few pages as they establish new rituals, but it’s not long before the aliens arrive.
They’re not awful. I’m actually fairly interested in the strange force of entropy that draws planets towards their inevitable end in what seems like a black hole. The main alien, only known as “The Nameless One,” is interesting enough as an emotive free-thinker in a species of logic-driven pragmatists. I can even see potential in the intersection of The Nameless One with someone like Lilith, both free-spirited and unburdened by the excessive knowledge of a more established society.
How it feels before the aliens show up
How it feels after the aliens show up
The problem is that as soon as the aliens enter the picture, the storytelling zooms all the way out. There are some 40 pages of narration/exposition filling us in on everything we need to know about The Nameless One and his species’ history, leaving only 60 pages to work on the relationship between Lilith and the aliens, and how that relationship affects everyone.
This is also where the idea of consciousness and escaping the bounds of entropy through thought comes into play. I, straight-up, do not get it. I also did not get a similar ending in the fellow 1970s novel Islands by Marta Randall. Maybe I’m just woefully limited in my ability for cosmic-level thinking. Maybe I simply don’t have access to the psychedelic drugs of the 1970s. Or maybe it’s something else.
Lydia Obukhova was a woman born and raised in the Soviet Union. In fact, this novel is translated from its original Russian. And while I have read precious little Soviet era literature, what I have read does focus heavily on the position of the self in relation to society and the brilliance of self-expression and thought. If you do any research into her history, too, the potential depth of her work simply looks deeper.
There’s little information about Lydia Obukhova in English, but a little bit of digging into “Лидия Алексеевна Обухова“ spins up some new information. Now, my Russian is straight trash. I just barely remember how to sound out Cyrillic letters, so I’m taking everything on the Google translation of Wikipedia. However,
”The Great Patriotic War found Lydia Obukhov in Lithuania, on the border of the Soviet Union . She spent the whole war in a fascist concentration camp (as the daughter of a border guard).”
That’s a lot to stuff into one sentence, but given that the Soviet Union was not, technically, fascist, and “The Great Patriotic War” is the Russian term for “World War II” and Nazi Germany was, technically, fascist, I’m inclined to believe that this means she was literally incarcerated in a concentration camp as a child.
I’m awful at discussing themes and theories in relation to literature, especially in relation to the author’s life. I also tend to stick to a fairly utilitarian approach to art: if something isn’t present in the art, its not worth discussing when discussing the art. And yet this information does impact my interpretation and appreciation of the story. Lydia Obukhova lived her entire life in the dogmatic and confirming world of the Soviet Union—except for when she was incarcerated by the fanatical and confirming world of the Third Reich.
It’s no wonder this re-telling of an old myth spun off into the nature of consciousness, the place of self-expression, and a low-key treatise on what we owe each other.
As a novel, Daughter of Night still doesn’t speak to me, but as a window to peek into historical mindsets, my engagement with the novel increases dramatically. But is it a good novel? Alas, even with this insight into Lydia Obukhova’s life, I can’t say that it is. So if you have a specific interest in Soviet-era literature, books with hot-takes on the nature of consciousness, or the mythology of Adam’s first wife Lilith, then this could be an interesting read. Otherwise, I’m not sure this is a book that should be particularly sought after.
Cover art by Unknown :(
