Harbin Moths

Madness reigns among Russian emigrants in Tallinn in the 1920s and 1930s, when it was called Revel. Thrown to the edge of life by the Soviet Country, they long for their homeland, of which only "a bundle of anecdotes" remains. They seek work, money, bread, cocaine, a new ideology, a new normal, themselves... Here, even before Hitler, a miserable Russian emigration fascism is born, as petty and vile as the moths that arrived in a package from Chinese ideological comrades. Yet the fascist moths turn out to be ordinary moths, devouring the best in humanity, hopes turn to dust, and the bright future is cut off "in one summer," in the year 1940.

Andrei Ivanov is a Russian writer living in Estonia, the author of the novels "The Journey of Hanuman to Lolland" (shortlisted for the "Russian Booker" prize) and "A Handful of Ashes" ("Russian Prize").