Puppies

NEW NOVEL BY THE WINNER OF THE GRAND PRIX OF THE NATIONAL LITERARY AWARD "MANUSCRIPT OF THE YEAR" FOR THE BOOK "TERRA". Even death can be fooled... A dead girl is found in the closet, claiming that the late owner... of the apartment practiced witchcraft, and therefore cannot truly die until she passes on her power. A story about witches, devils, the deceased, and New Year's celebrations spent with family. On the eve of the new year 1998, three brothers - a cop, a thug, and a soldier - meet not at a festive table, but in much darker surroundings: in the kitchen next to their mother's coffin. This scene is where "Puppies" begins - a creepy family saga. In a Moscow apartment, where every object holds the memory of the past - from the smell of cheap booze to longstanding quarrels - the brothers are to spend an overnight vigil. Their conversations and memories are bleak: violence, indifference, and alcohol dominate. But the domestic drama soon takes on another scale: in the closet, the brothers find a dead girl. This frightening discovery leads to an even more terrifying revelation: the girl is dead, but not quite... And, as in a scary fairy tale, the deceased mother has one condition for the brothers - which is both impossible to fulfill and impossible to ignore. A grim, ironic, and psychologically accurate novel about a family bound not by love, but by death. "The mystical element of the novel does not destroy realism - rather, it enhances the feeling of blurred boundaries between life and death, between the present and the past. Black humor here is not a means to shock, but a way to describe a reality where the tragic and the mundane coexist inseparably. The novel is practically a natural science observation of a family, where the past continues to define the present. And who is different?" Natalya Fomina, journalist, writer, literary critic