Long-listed for the 2016 PEN Translation Prize
A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice

A dazzling, utterly distinctive saga from Russia's most celebrated and most controversial novelist

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 impenetrable blizzard. A trip that should last no more than a few hours turns into a metaphysical journey, an expedition filled with extraordinary encounters, dangerous escapades, torturous imaginings, and amorous adventures.

Trapped in an existential storm, Vladimir Sorokin’s characters fight their way across a landscape that owes as much to Chekhov’s Russian countryside as it does to the postapocalyptic terrain of science fiction. Hypnotic, fascinating, and richly drawn, The Blizzard is a seminal work from one of the most inventive authors writing today. Sorokin has created yet another boldly original work, which combines an avant-garde sensibility with a taste for the absurd and the grotesque, all while delivering stinging truths about contemporary life and modern-day Russia.

Vladimir Sorokin is the author of many plays, short stories, screenplays, and novels, including Day of the Oprichnik (FSG, 2011.) Sorokin was shortlisted 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.