the Village at Edge of Noon

The residents of a village outside Moscow wake up to discover that the road out to the motorway has disappeared without a trace and the usual paths into the woods somehow lead back into the village. And the woods? Overnight their weedy and rubbish-strewn copse has become a dark and overgrown forest inhabited by something mysterious and unfriendly. Anyone who makes it into the trees either vanishes into thin air or returns, not quite themselves... And, of course, the Internet, radio and TV have stopped working and the weather never changes. And time seems to loop seamlessly from one crop of apples and cabbages into the next. There are strange noises, and strange visitations. The villagers are plagued by odd thoughts and desires, and quiet but pervasive voices call from the river. Objects mutate; phones and radios emit strange mutterings; people disappear. What begins as a one-sided manifestation of the weird, becomes weirder still as the villagers split into factions and odd alliances with the new neighbours are formed. Meanwhile the forest looms closer every day. Is Katya, a solitary young woman, the only one beginning to glimpse what is going on? Translated by Ilona Chavasse

Everything you were afraid to find out about the heat of noon and grandma’s old tales comes together in this English language debut of an award-winning and bestselling young Russian writer. What if summer never ends? Residents of a Russian village wake up one morning to find that everything has changed. The road to the motorway has disappeared. The paths into woods all lead back to the village. If you enter the woods, your fate is either to vanish into thin air, or to return as a different version of yourself. Normality becomes a thing of the past as objects mutate, devices emit odd sounds, no one knows who the next victim to disappear will be. Without the internet and modern technology, the residents are stuck in a seemingly never ending summer, punctuated by strange noises and stranger visitations. As the forest grows closer, villagers must try to differentiate between ally and foe. In the midst of the chaos, there’s Katya, the only one who seems to understand what’s happening… Translated by Ilona Chavasse