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, or someone, is at work. Something that no one except twelve-year-old Valerka can see for what it is.
When he confides in the young leader Igor, only to be disbelieved, Valerka finds himself carrying the burden of what he knows completely alone. 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.
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 steadily-growing cast of bloodsuckers and their 'carcasses'. Through them, Ivanov gives us both a thriller and a book of subtlety and depth. Building steadily towards its enthralling climax, The Food Block crackles with delightful dialogue, exudes humour that does not make fun, and explores with apparently effortless insight the loves and energy, hopes and doubts, and fears and courage of childhood and youth.
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.
Richard Coombes has been a classicist, a musician, an international tax specialist, and now translates Russian-language literature (verse, prose, and song lyrics) into English. Richard's recently published translations include Elena Dolgopyat's short story collection Someone Else's Life ('Chuzhaya zhizn'), published in 2023 by Glagoslav; other short stories by Elena Dolgopyat and poetry by Lyudmila Knyazeva, Dmitry Vodennikov and Tatyana Voltskaya in a variety of literary journals; poetry in the bilingual World War II poetry collection Poems from the Front ('Frontovaya lira'), published in Russia in 2021; and poetry in the bilingual anti-war anthology Disbelief, published in January 2023. A follow-up anthology by the 'Disbelief' team, called Dislocation, will be published in 2024. Richard's translation of Liza's Waterfall (Pavel Basinsky's documentary-thriller 'Posmotrite na menya') is complete and awaiting publication.
