Vladimir Sorokin - The Blizzard

The older Chinese looked at Crouper. He lay alone in the emptied hood, looking as though he’d been placed in a grave that was too large for him. His gloved hands clutched his chest, as though holding and protecting his horses; one leg was tucked under, the other was turned out, frozen in an awkward position.

“Search him,” the older Chinese commanded the younger.

The younger man reluctantly followed orders. A silver ruble, forty kopecks in copper, a lighter, and two crusts of bread were found in Crouper’s coat pocket. He had no documents with him. The Chinese began to search under his cold clothes, and discovered two strings around his neck: one with a Russian Orthodox cross, the other, a key. It was the key to the stable. The Chinese tore off the key and handed it to his superior. The man turned the key around in his hand and tossed it in the snow.

“Cover him,” the older man nodded.

The young man took the frost-stiffened matting, now hard as plywood, and covered the hood. The older man pointed at the sack with the horses and headed toward the train. The young Chinese picked up the sack, slung it over his back, and followed. The horses, already tossed about in the dark of the sack, had urinated on themselves and finally managed to calm down; now they just grunted and snorted. Only the restless roan gave a piercing neigh, bidding farewell to his master forever.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vladimir Sorokin is the author of eleven novels, including Day of the Oprichnik (FSG, 2011), Ice Trilogy , and The Queue ; thirteen plays; and numerous short stories and screenplays. He wrote the libretto for Leonid Desyatnikov’s The Children of Rosenthal , the first opera to be commissioned by the Bolshoi Theater in a quarter century. His books have been translated into thirty languages. He has won the Andrei Bely and the Maxim Gorky prizes, and The Blizzard was the recipient of both the NOS Literature Prize and the Bolshaya Kniga prize. In 2013, Sorokin was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize. He lives in Moscow. You can sign up for email updates here.

A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Jamey Gambrell is a writer on Russian art and culture, and the translator of Vladimir Sorokin’s Day of the Oprichnik and Ice Trilogy . She has also translated works of prose and poetry by Joseph Brodsky, Tatyana Tolstaya, and Marina Tsvetaeva, among others. You can sign up for email updates here.

ALSO BY VLADIMIR SOROKIN

Day of the Oprichnik

Ice Trilogy:

Bro

Ice

23,000

The Queue

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Epigraph

The Blizzard

A Note About the Author

Also by Vladimir Sorokin

Copyright

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2010 by Vladimir Sorokin

Translation copyright © 2015 by Jamey Gambrell

All rights reserved

Originally published in 2010 by Astrel, Russia, as Метель

Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

First American edition, 2015

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

[Metel′. English]

The blizzard: a novel / Vladimir Sorokin; translated by Jamey Gambrell. — First American edition.

pages cm

Published in Russian under the title Метель.

ISBN 978-0-374-11437-4 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-374-70939-6 (e-book)

1. Dystopias—Fiction. 2. Psychological fiction. I. Gambrell, Jamey, translator. II. Title.

PG3488 . O66 M4813 2015

891.73'5—dc23

2015010964

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Published with the support of the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation TRANSCRIPT Programme to Support Translations of Russian Literature