A review by cruelspirit
The Blizzard by Vladimir Sorokin

adventurous mysterious sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This is my sixth Sorokin work that I’ve read and I’m still glad to say that no two books have been the same, for better or for worse. The Blizzard is seldom discussed when it comes to the works of Sorokin and honestly I probably wouldn’t have read it if I didn’t set out to try to read all of Sorokin’s works available in English. 

Originally published in 2010 and translated into English by Jamey Gambrell in 2015, this relatively short novel offers a post apocalyptic setting that bounces between feeling futuristic and traditionalistic. While this is a near future 21st Century setting, it can often feel like it is taking place in the 20th or even 19th Century. We follow a doctor and his driver as they traverse the Russian countryside in the middle of a blizzard in order to deliver a vaccine to cure an ongoing zombie outbreak. This definitely is work of the early 2010s at the peak of the zombie apocalypse craze. While this has never been much of a subject matter of interest for me, I did find Sorokin’s take to be of interest and unique, this is Vladimir Sorokin we’re talking about. 

We follow the doctor and his driver as they take a horse drawn carriage to their destination. This slow and arduous trek is made even more demanding by traveling in an active and ever persistent blizzard. The Blizzard is a novel about the journey, we see the complications they face and the people they meet along the way. Unfortunately there isn’t much to their journey in terms of interesting occurrence and after a while the narrative does start to feel like it treads water. This meandering plot is intentional but given the elaborate setting and plot elements it ultimately feels like a very lacking story to read. Much is introduced and very little is explored to satisfaction.

Having read as much Sorokin as I have at this point I can say this is my least favorite work of his I’ve read. Having read his shorties I can say that this idea could have worked a lot better being paired down or structured with more substance throughout the pages.

While I still believe that no two Sorokin books are alike there are some recurring themes. Of course the science fiction ideas around Russian culture and society are here but I’m mainly referring to his fixation on highly euphoric and addictive substances. I do love these kinds of science fiction stories but when it comes to Sorokin they often feel like plot elements that often are the same thing in every story, just dressed up differently. In The Ice Trilogy it was “ice”, in Telluria it was "tellurium”, here it is a pyramid that causes euphoric hallucinations. The idea presented here is the weakest of the three instances, which is made especially apparent having read it third. My favorite of these is still The Ice Trilogy’s attempt as it is explored in much greater depth.

I have not looked at the original Russian, or have much of an understanding of the language outside of a barely notable familiarity but I didn’t find this translation very beneficial to the source material. While I found most of the narrative to flow well enough I was often distracted by bizarre word choices, making for a clunky reading experience. You can tell that this translation was done very literally and some of the words or phrasing reflects that. 

Most egregious was seeing how many times the words “damnation” or “dang” were used as a negative exclamation. I’m not sure what word Sorokin originally used here but it puzzled me why this was done instead of a rather basic “damn”. It almost feels like there is a level of censorship or esteemed reverence that is trying to be upheld here, which doesn’t fit with the Sorokin style at all.  “сука блять” might be one of the most popular Russian phrases out there and that certainly has a more vulgar meaning than just saying “damn”. Using “damnation” really feels unrealistic to how anyone would speak, especially a Russian person in the circumstances of this novel.

This story is told as one continuous narrative with no chapter breaks and only a few expressed scene breaks. While not typically a way of structuring a story, it isn’t unheard of and compared to how other Sorokin works are, a pretty plain choice for narrative structure. This wouldn’t even be a point of note if this was a short story but when the narrative pushes towards 200 pages it feels intentional, if anything it makes this relatively lacking narrative go by at quite a quick page. 

Overall, I just expect more from a Sorokin work. The few flashes of that Sorokin style that are here are enjoyable but they are few and far between and what amounts of them are very tame and not rewarding in their offering. The strongest element here definitely is the description of the blizzard. The closing in delirium and isolation of being out in a heavy snowstorm is done really well but when it comes to the actual prose I preferred Lydia Chukovskaya’s Going Under, which I read recently, in its offering of Russian winter landscape.