Summary:
The summer of 1980. The Moscow Olympics. A small pioneer camp on the banks of the Volga. The pioneers fall out, make up, play tricks. Romances start up among the young leaders. The river bus brings in drums of milk and boxes of pasta. Life in the quirky gingerbread cake buildings of the camp establishes its rhythms against the backdrop of the Volga’s ceaseless flow and the sunset’s daily blush over the Zhiguli mountains. But something is wrong. Something that no one except twelve-year-old Valerka can see. Disbelieved by the young leader Igor, in whom he confides, Valerka is left carrying the burden of what he knows completely alone.
Some of the children and young leaders are becoming vampires. Valerka resists the vampires on principle, while Igor finally joins forces with him only when what is happening touches him personally. Together, they brace themselves to do battle with a power they have no reason to believe they can withstand.
The Food Block speaks of how state ideology, even where its design is oriented towards the ideal, is nevertheless something dead, while love and friendship are forever living. Ivanov brings us a gallery of colourful characters: idealistic, dogged Valerka; seventeen-year-old Igor, groping to find himself and on the way finding his first love; the spiky and beautiful Veronika; the blithely self-absorbed Anastasiika; the drunken doctor who knows too much; the partly paralysed scullery maid Nyura; the old Civil War veteran Serp Ivanych; the steadily-growing cast of bloodsuckers and their “carcasses.” Through them, Ivanov gives us both a thriller and a book of humour, insight, subtlety, and depth.
About The Author:
Alexei Ivanov has written fifteen novels, published between 1992 (Dormitory on the Blood) and 2023 (The Armoured Steamships, a novel that reflects Ivanov’s long-time interest in the Russian Civil War). Ivanov’s novels have been nominated three times for the National Bestseller prize, and for several other awards within Russia, including the Big Book Award. His works have been adapted for the big and small screen, most notably his 2003 novel The Geographer Drank Away his Globe, which was made into a multi-award-winning film starring Konstantin Khabensky. The Food Block (‘Pishcheblok’) has been made into a television serial which first aired on Russian television in 2021 and has since been followed up by a 2023 sequel, The Food Block 2.
Review copies are available upon request.
Title: The Food Block
Author: Alexei Ivanov
Translator: Richard Coombes
Publisher: Glagoslav Publications B.V.
Language: English
ISBN: 9781804841280, 9781804841297, 9781804841273
Extent: 397 pages
Price: €30.99 (PB), €34.99 (HB), €10.95 (e-book)
Format: paperback, hardback, e-book
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