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This star-crossed gay romance is a #1 bestselling TikTok sensation that took readers by storm, made international news, and catalyzed one of Russia's largest-ever crackdowns on LGBTQ representation.
The year is 1986, and Yurka Konev, 16, has been sent off for another summer at Pioneer Camp. Impulsive, forthright, and unfairly branded as a troublemaker, he anticipates the weeks ahead of him with boredom and dread. But when he's pushed into working on the camp's theater production, he meets serious, thoughtful troop leader Volodya. Yurka finds himself drawn to the slightly older boy, and, surprisingly, Volodya seems to like him, too. The two boys grow closer and closer, and though both fear the consequences of their illegal attraction, its gravity pulls them together. Now, 20 years later, Yury returns to the abandoned camp to reminisce on the relationship that changed his life forever—and discovers that not all history is destined to remain in the past.
Cowritten by a Ukrainian–Russian duo, Pioneer Summer became a runaway TikTok sensation and #1 bestseller in Russia, reaching such heights of popularity that Putin stepped in to ban it. Now, this swoony romance will transport American readers to another place and time and introduce them to one of the most memorable relationships of their lives.
"A bestseller in Russia before it was banned by Putin, this tender gay love story from debut authors Malisova and Sylvanova explores illicit desire at a Soviet summer camp...As the story unfolds, it reinforces the message that there's nothing abnormal about gay desire, evoking the sweetness and innocence of young love as well as its emotional torments in ways that feel powerfully universal. It's a delightful tale of self-determination." —Publishers Weekly
"[Pioneer Summer] sensitively charts the process of falling in love for the first time. The relationship between Yury and Volodya, blossoming in difficult circumstances, is tenderly described. It is, at heart, a classic story of young love triumphing, however briefly, against the odds... . The book is more than a breakout hit. It is also the catalyst for the latest legislative assault on L.G.B.T.Q. rights in Russia." —New York Times
This information about Pioneer Summer 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.
Kateryna Sylvanova was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine. She graduated from Kharkiv National Agrarian University and later moved to the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, where she worked in a shoe store and spent her free time writing. Elena Malisova was born in a provincial Soviet town in the late 1980s, where she lived until she moved to Moscow in the late 2000s. Growing up, she wrote poems that were published in small local newspapers. Sylvanova and Malisova met in 2016 and together began working on Summer in a Pioneer Tie. Both authors left Russia in 2022 after a flurry of death threats, with Sylvanova returning to Ukraine and Malisova moving to Germany.
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