Big Bustle

In the pre-New Year days, dramatic events unfold in the very center of Makhachkala: several people clash with a large construction company, security forces, and the city administration to protect a tree—the tallest beech in Europe, which is set to be cut down to build an office center in its place. One must admit, there is something in this plot familiar to many... Will a handful of brave souls manage to save the tree, and how will the lives of the story's heroes—both the protagonists and the villains—change in these few days?
The new book by Islam Khanipaev, a laureate of the Lyceum literary prize, a finalist for the NOS, National Bestseller, and Yasnaya Polyana prizes for the novella "Typa Ya," resembles a New Year’s fairy tale—kind, as genre conventions prescribe, at times funny, and at times sadly tearful, yet still sharply ironic and relentless towards evil in all its forms.