new representation
the new novel by Danilov about the horror of soft dictatorship
Book of the Year 2022 | Yasnaya Polyana Award 2022 (sponsored by Samsung)
In Dmitri Danilov’s new novel SASHA, HELLO! prisons are now called Combinat, you live like in a luxury hotel. Executions are no longer carried out by executioners. Instead, a warden takes you out for a walk every day through the same hallway, where one fine day you will be torn to pieces by a salvo of an algorithm controlled machine gun. This can happen in three days or in thirty years. As luck would have it. All humane, because you actually don‘t notice anything and can go on living your life as before.
The main character of the book is reminiscent of all the key figures of the most famous anti-utopias at once, from D-503 to Josef K., but the conditions in which he is placed have never been told in such a way. This novel moves right on the edge of the real.