On February 22 , Tales of the Fatherland – the first book by Dmitry Glukhovsky published in Poland after the outbreak of Russian aggression against Ukraine – hit bookstores .
The writer, known in Poland primarily from the bestsellers Metro 2033 and Futu.re , earned the title of “agent of foreign influence” in Russia at that time for publicly opposing the war unleashed by his country from the very beginning and ruthlessly criticizing his government. Glukhovsky’s books in Russian bookstores first began to be marked with an appropriate tag, and then disappeared from them altogether. Glukhovsky himself is wanted by the Putin regime on an arrest warrant. Reading Tales of the Fatherland , it is impossible not to understand why.
In Norilsk, a closed city 300 kilometers above the Arctic Circle, shrouded in sulfur mist, the buried call to the living. An “innocent” government reform causes time to stop flowing in Russia. A teddy bear negotiates with the president to change the policy of the Russian Federation. A single father searches the buildings of the Moscow administration for justice after his son was hit by a gangster BMW X5 belonging to a high-ranking police officer. An ethnic altercation between soldiers at a Russian military base in eastern Asia threatens the world with nuclear annihilation. Communion, in which instead of wine, vodka is taken. An elevator that needs to be fed with bags of millions of rubles. A sysadmin controlling the election mechanics who ran out of ideas for a pre-election show. Robotic judges. Ubiquitous mock-ups.
These seemingly distant situations are connected not only by their absurdity. Their common denominator is Russia – or rather, how the Russian cursed by Putin, Dmitry Glukhovsky, sees his homeland.
You can get the book here and here , and the Insignis Publishing House released a promotional video and one of the stories on the occasion of the premiere .
