91Èȱ¬

If there is a single writer to whom I've done an injustice - it's Charles Dickens.

I must tell you why.

While I was serving in the Soviet Army in my youth, I noticed that I hadn't read many of the 'greats' in world literature and decided to deal with it.

You may know the army logic, if you do anything, you do it in A to Z manner.

So I went to the regiment's library and started from the 'A' shelf.

Luckily it wasn't too long. Aksakov, Aragon, some Appolinaire, and I was done.

'B' took me some time to struggle.

Just one Balzac was represented in a dozen volumes, then there were Barbusse, Bitov, Bradbury and even some Bogomolov - all in several volumes.

It took me a couple of months of reading - mostly sorry to say - in the toilet cabin of our platoon during the night time, while other comrades were sleeping.

'C' was also populous, so when in five to six months I had reached the 'D' shelf with a noticeable 30 volumes of Dickens, 20 volumes of Dostoevsky, 12 volumes of Dreiser and likes - I understood that I was running out of time and would never reach the mid-shelves of the library - let alone Zweig or Zoshenko.

At the same time the Komsomol'skaya Pravd or 'Truth of Comsomols' newspaper started to publish educational articles about the technique of a 'diagonal reading' or 'fast-reading', stating that people like Lenin or J F Kennedy were able to read books like War and Peace overnight.

That was what the doctor prescribed and I started to master this technique while reading volume after volume of poor Charles Dickens.

So, I read all 30 volumes of him in a matter of two to three months.

But what had happened to the content - it turned into an enormous melee of one Dickens, a kind of a mega-novel, where Oliver Twist is a brother of Little Dorith and they leave in turn in the Bleak House or the Old Shop of Curiosities, to be grown up as David Copperfield or Nicholas Nickleby and become a member of a Pickwick Club.

All stories and characters, all plots and locations, all coined phrases and word-plays of Dickens, safely and surely were put inside of me, but in no particular order.

I represent a sort of a Dickensian circumlocution office where all kind of documents enter, but none comes out...

I must admit that coming to England in 1994 to work I had a feeling of deja vu as if I had already lived in this country.

It was subliminal Dickens, sitting inside of me as a hidden guide, teasingly preparing me to any situation.

When people used to break their English and loudly repeat something, I knew that they were trying to be nice to me.

When some of my friends ate quickly and spoke slowly, I was well equipped to recognise a certain philosophical mind in them.

In the local garage I met a local Mr Scrooge, one of my neighbours was an Artful Dodger...

Over the last two years I have decided to put my Dickens' house in some order.

I've started to watch costume dramas made by Dickens' novels.

I watched nearly all of them.

But strange enough, any of them, be it Great Expectations, Christmas Carol, Little Dorrit or David Copperfield - left me with a feeling of something not complete.

After each of the films I wanted to watch the next, trying to understand both Dickens and his literature.

And finally I understood why.

He is still alive inside of me as the only megabook which consists of 30 volumes or rather chapters and what I used to consider as injustice is in fact grace which I carry inside of me all my life from its 'A' to the very 'Z'.

PS I've just been at the 91Èȱ¬ World Service World Book Club devoted to Dickens' bi-centenary and particularly to his 'Great Expectations'.

Experts and listeners from India and Kenya, Britain and Canada, from all over the world were discussing the genius of Dickens.

It coincided with the 10 anniversary of the World Book Club.

My congratulations to the team which produce such a wonderful programme, to its presenter Harriet Gilbert and in the spirit of that programme a question to my readers:

Why do you think Dickens used a mysterious birth from unknown parents for several characters as a plot device?