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The Blizzard
The Blizzard
Jan 17, 2026 2:03 AM

Author:Vladimir Sorokin,Jamey Gambrell

The Blizzard

A darkly comic dystopian odyssey, from one of Russia's leading contemporary novelists

Garin, a country doctor, is desperately trying to reach the village of Dolgoye, where a mysterious epidemic is transforming the villagers into zombies. He has with him a vaccine which will prevent the spread of this epidemic, but a terrible blizzard turns his journey into the stuff of nightmare. A trip that should take hours turns into a metaphysical odyssey, in which he encounters strange beasts, apparitions, hallucinations and dangerous fellow men. Trapped in this existential storm, Sorokin's characters fight their way through a landscape that owes as much to Chekhov's 19th-century Russia as it does to near-future, post-apocalyptic literature. Fantastical, comic and richly drawn, The Blizzard at once answers to the canon of Russian writers and makes a fierce statement about life in contemporary Russia.

Reviews

Vladimir Sorokin [is] Russia's most inventive contemporary author

—— Masha Gessen , New York Times Book Review

In feeling the pulse of a raw Dublin suburb, Doyle is recording a beat that can be recognised all over the world

—— The Times

This new novel is Roddy Doyle's best to date. I cannot recall any writer who has better captured the vulnerability and courage of a woman trapped in a loveless marriage

—— Cork Examiner

Even more mesmerizing than his prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

—— Daily Mail

Impassioned, dignified and richly humane

—— Independent

His best work yet

—— The Times

Compulsively readable

—— Financial Times

Roddy Doyle's unsparing examination of a brutal marriage transcends the boundaries of class and nationhood

—— The Times

Paula Spencer may be Doyle's most successful literary creation yet, a tour de force of literary ventriloquism that gives the lie to the old writing workshop canard that a man can't write from the point of view of a woman, let alone in her voice

—— Washington Post

A complex and intricate portrait of an unlikely, yet likable, heroine

—— Calum Macdonald , The Herald
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