-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
A dazzling, utterly distinctive saga from Russia's most celebrated-and most controversial-novelist
Vladimir Sorokin is one of Russia's most popular and provocative novelists. In his scabrous dystopian satire Day of the Oprichnik, American readers were introduced to his distinctive style, which combines an edgy avant-garde sensibility with a fondness for the absurd and even the grotesque-all in service of bringing out stinging truths about life in modern-day Russia.
In The Blizzard, we are immersed in the atmosphere of a nineteenth-century Russia. Garin, a district doctor, is desperately trying to reach the village of Dolgoye, where a mysterious epidemic is turning people into zombies. He carries with him a vaccine that will prevent the spread of this terrible disease but is stymied in his travels by an all-consuming snowstorm, an impenetrable blizzard that turns a drive that should last only a few hours into a voyage of days and, finally, a journey into eternity.
The Blizzard dramatizes a timeless metaphysical predicament. The characters in this nearly postapocalyptic world are constantly in motion and yet somehow trapped and frozen-spending day and night fighting their way through the storm on an expedition filled with extraordinary encounters, dangerous escapades, torturous imaginings, and amorous adventures. Hypnotic, fascinating, and richly descriptive, The Blizzard is a seminal work from one of the most inventive writers working today.
"[It] doesn't quite rise to the level of his previous books, despite its fast pace and air of frigid danger. Sorokin's mean streak is still intact, but The Blizzard is, paradoxically, the breeziest of satires." - Publishers Weekly
"A strange, distinctly Russian diversion for readers looking for something completely different." - Kirkus Reviews
This information about The Blizzard was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Vladimir Sorokin is the author of many plays, short stories, screenplays, and novels, including Day of the Oprichnik. He was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013. He has won the Andrei Bely Prize and the Maxim Gorky Prize, and was nominated for the Booker–Open Russia Literary Prize. He lives in Moscow.
If you liked The Blizzard, try these:
by Orlando Figes
Published 2023
From "the great storyteller of Russian history" (Financial Times), a brilliant account of the national mythologies and imperial ideologies that have shaped Russia's past and politics - essential reading for understanding the country today.
by Joshua Yaffa
Published 2021
From a leading journalist in Moscow and correspondent for The New Yorker, a groundbreaking portrait of modern Russia and the inner struggles of the people who sustain Vladimir Putin's rule.
by Julia Phillips
Published 2020
Spellbinding, moving - evoking a fascinating region on the other side of the world - this suspenseful and haunting story announces the debut of a profoundly gifted writer.
There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are either well written or badly written. That is all.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
