The Last Day of Summer

A classic small town horror — as if Stephen King wrote about Rostov in 1993; but Andrey Podshibyakin knows Rostov better.
Andrey Podshibyakin is a graduate of Rostov State University and VGIK, a legendary columnist for all important gloss magazines of the 'zeroes' ranging from 'Afisha' and 'Esquire' to 'Game.EXE' and 'OM', the author of 'Afisha's' travel guide to California, the books 'Time for Games!' and 'Gamerzurnal'; he lives in Los Angeles. The rights to adapt his new novel 'The Last Day of Summer' were acquired even before the book's release; a series is planned.

Tanais, the delta of the Don. An ancient land, soaked many fathoms deep in the blood of Cimmerians, Greeks, Sarmatians, Genoese, Scythians, Romans, Ottomans...

It holds within it the one who sleeps beneath the burial mounds.

Rostov-on-Don, 1993.

A quiet southern city, lace curtains on the windows and houses drowning in greenery, simple customs, 'where guests come without asking, where there is no envy or malice'.

Even the Mongol feared it.

Savage nomads fled from it in horror.

After it, like after the plague, cities were erased to dust.

It can possess the minds of people and tell the funniest jokes. It sleeps beneath the burial mounds.

Four eighth-graders, still unaware that they will soon become friends, lead an ordinary life for teenagers in the early nineties: they study, fight, fall in love, learn karate from films in video rental shops, hunt for stone-washed jeans or foreign science fiction...

Their accidentally spilled blood will awaken the one who sleeps beneath the burial mounds.