Current Moscow Time: 16:05:5321 May 2013
The world’s biggest country, in a magazine. Since 1956.
Book Review
Under Review
Previous review || Next review || All Reviews
Roadside Picnic
By Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Translated by Olena Bormashenko (Chicago Review Press $15.95)
Widely regarded as one of the great science fiction novels of all time, Roadside Picnic has nonetheless been out of print (in English) for three decades. This new translation by a Russian-born mathematician living in the U.S. was a labor of love. And it paid off. Dark, racy and unpredictable, this novel – the basis for the classic film S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – shows how science fiction was such a powerful platform for dissent, and the venue for many of the freest writers in the waning Soviet Union.
— Paul E. Richardson
Purchase this item
Reviewed in Russian Life: July/Aug 2012