Press Secretary of Greenpeace Russia Halimat Tekeeva about favorite books
IN BACKGROUND "BOOK SHELF"we ask journalists, writers, scholars, curators, and other heroines about their literary preferences and publications, which occupy an important place in their bookcase. Today the press secretary of Greenpeace Russia Khalimat Tekeeva shares her stories about favorite books.
My grandmother's sister recalls how I, at preschool age, exclaimed that it was necessary to save the planet. I was small, and the very idea that some living beings can survive at a great depth, while others feel great somewhere high in the sky, was fascinating. Before adolescence, I thought that I would devote my life to birds: for some reason it seemed to me that they are more fragile, therefore more defenseless. More than anything, I adored retellings of the Iliad and Yury Dmitriev's book Neighbors on the Planet. The first part of the books always told about the misadventures of animals that had to suffer because of human intervention in habitual ecosystems, the second about the wonderful diversity of species. While reading, I could forget about everything, including some boring algebra.
At some point, love for the word overcame the desire to save the world, and I entered the journalism department of Moscow State University - all my youth I studied Kafka, Balzac, Ionesco and Brecht. Three years ago I was lucky and I got to Greenpeace - now I am writing about nature conservation. Less and less often I manage to carve out the evening for Bykov with his inimitable biographies or for qualitative non-biology. But now in the books I notice things related to my work. In the "Wild" mention burned down and not restored national park? Save the quote. Did Akhmatova find a line about how “four weeks dry peat in the swamps is burning”? I have been thinking for a long time what happened in 1914, that the peatlands that have not yet been drained have suffered.
I read most often in Bookmate - it is more convenient to devote time to your favorite book on the subway, bus, or on the way to the fire. I gave a whole crowd of friends a subscription to the application and have never been disappointed in several years of use. True, it did not significantly reduce my passion for acquiring paper publications, but there are still breakdowns - friends from the philology department come to visit to see my book collection.
Svetlana Alexievich
"Chernobyl prayer"
I read this book on the wave of interest in the writer. Everything works with her like this. At first you think: "Seriously? Dots? Tantrum?". And at some point you realize that you literally breathe in time with her prose, that you are ready to cry with the wife of a firefighter thrown into radioactive fire. What is bad for you - as if you are a victim yourself, you cannot believe in the horror that happened in a seemingly peaceful place, and even in a beautiful quiet spring, when everything is blooming. The event is worse than the war, although it is with her that many heroes compare the accident. In the "Chernobyl prayer" collected various evidence - from accomplices of the crime to civilians and journalists. Anyone who says how well the Soviet Union coped with the tragedy, you can simply give this book, turn away and not talk until you read it. Because you can not forget this - it is criminal and anti-human.
Ishmael Bih
"I'm going to kill tomorrow"
This is a first-hand study of the war: the skinny hands of a hungry guy come from Sierra Leone, who were drugged and sent to fight. “Tomorrow I am going to kill,” is the everyday and therefore even more terrible story of a 13-year-old boy. How does a ruthless killer grow in a teen with an interest in American rap? The book partly explains how the wars in Africa are organized and this crusade of children of the 20th century.
Jeremy Rifkin
"The Third Industrial Revolution"
For me, this is a utopian, but hopeful attempt to think about our future. Its author is a well-known popularizer of renewable energy. He claims that everyone will soon be able to make a small station for the production of electricity from the sun and water out of his house. The world will be rebuilt, and it will benefit everyone: if everyone has a resource, then it will be pointless to fight for coal and oil. It is hard to believe in many things that Rifkin prophesies, but the fact that we are on the verge of big changes is obvious.
Joachim Radkau
"Nature and Power"
This book is about environmental history - a direction that studies how the struggle for resources and the interaction of the environment and humans have influenced the course of events. Now we are not struck by this, but the need to create a normal sewage system for the citizens may have changed our world no less than Napoleon. Radkau's book is a unique study that you should definitely read - given that there are not so many good books on this subject in Russian.
Hansjörg Küster
"Forest History"
At one time I dragged to my forester colleagues a stack of these books. The "bond" of German society, if any, is the forest, which is clear from literature and visual culture: Germany is a country with one of the most powerful romantic traditions. Kuster is fascinating to tell how the forest was formed in the European part of the continent and what role it played in the history of the states. For example, the Greeks destroyed the vegetation under pastures - and this did not lead to anything good. And Germany has always been considered the edge of impenetrable, wild forests, even when they were not so.
Henry Toro
"Walden, or Life in the Forest"
And this is another look at the forest - an unscientific and fascinating first-person story. The American Henry Toro in the 19th century decided that society did not suit him at all, so he built himself a hut in more often and remained there to live alone. The seasons succeeded each other, and the forest around every day gave the lyrical hero inspiration and a new world view. Excerpts of this text can be read out loud in one breath: the result is better than any meditation.
Mohandas Gandhi
"My life"
I read three books about the cult figure of non-violent protest, including my autobiography. Mohandas (he is not quite correctly called "Mahatma", he does not like this address) tells about his childhood in a patriarchal family, departure to England, where he wore a cylinder, like the British around him, about the struggle for justice in court and resistance to local laws government. Closer to the final sadness covers: the non-violent struggle of Gandhi turned into bloody conflicts and civil wars on the borders of the empire, which for centuries has maintained the illusion of control.
Victor Dolnik
"The naughty child of the biosphere. Conversations about human behavior in the company of birds, animals and children"
Ask anyone who is involved in environmental protection what book about the relationship between nature and man should be read by anyone who is not even familiar with the environment. Most likely, the first will be called "The naughty child of the biosphere." She - about the natural foundations of our behavior. Its author easily and with humor explains from the standpoint of biology and evolution all phenomena of private and public life: wars, totalitarian regimes, rituals and falling in love. We are smart, smart, who invented music, books and movies - but still animals. The fact that our morality is still too simple for the world that we created is the most unexpected thought for me after reading this book.
Herman Melville
"Moby Dick"
A great book, very poetic - and yet one of the most meticulous non-fiction on whaling. Read in one breath, I only had time to leave notes in the book. What is worse: a giant, pityless Leviathan or human stubbornness, pride and obsession on the verge of insanity? Everything accepting and honest ocean, cleansing the brains of the protagonist - and he will not give an answer. Like Ishmael himself. When I grew up and I studied myself as a boat driver on Baikal, I recalled “Moby Dick” more than once.
Alexander Etkind
"Internal colonization"
Etkind takes on a serious task - to describe how our country has become so big, how it tried to comprehend itself, to populate and control hundreds of nations. Of course, for me the story of the sable hunt became one of the most curious motives. It was she who forced the country to grow in breadth, seize new territories and distill barrels of hides abroad. Yes, it is barrels: sable fishing in the XVII century has much in common with the modern oil economy. The result is clear in both cases: we have ravaged the forests and are now pouring oil.
Vladimir Arsenyev
"In the Ussuri region. Dersu Uzala"
Another story about the internal colonization of the country in one of the most mysterious, unexplored and beautiful parts of it - in the Far East, on the border with China. The lyrical hero, the discoverer and experienced traveler, finds himself completely helpless in the Ussuri taiga in comparison with the old man-gold. Gold (the so-called local people) teaches him to respect the taiga and its inhabitants, calling birds, tigers, the sun and the moon "people." At the end of the book, the white man’s burden is a hero: a civilization, not a forest, finishes the old Dersu. Arsenyev won the glory of the Russian Fenimore Cooper, and Akira Kurosawa shot the same film and won an Oscar for it.
Douglas Adams
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Very funny, but also sad, if you think about it, a book. Like any space sagas, it reminds us that our planet is not immune from trouble: the universe will not protect the Earth for us, and we should take care of it ourselves. The world will always be ruled by bureaucracy and stupidity. You can raise your hand and fly to another planet in search of a better life, or sit in the restaurant "At the End of the Universe" and watch everything go to hell. There are millions or even billions of intelligent creatures in space, but this doesn’t make it easier to find an interlocutor, and the Babylonian fish doesn’t help to understand everyone.