On 22 August 2022 I signed an agreement with Glagoslav publications to translate Alexei Ivanov’s fabulously-written 2018 novel “Пищеблок” (working title ‘The Food Block’).

The book has now been published and is available worldwide.

Alexei Ivanov has written fifteen novels, published between 1992 (‘Dormitory on the Blood’) and 2023 (‘The Armoured Steamships’, a novel that reflects Ivanov’s long-time interest in the Russian Civil War). Ivanov’s novels have been nominated three times for the National Bestseller prize, and for several other awards within Russia, including the Big Book Award. His works have been adapted for the big and small screen, most notably his 2003 novel ‘The geographer drank away his globe’, which was made into a multi-award-winning film starring Konstantin Khabensky. ‘The Food Block’ itself has been made into a television serial which first aired on Russian television in 2021 and has since been followed up by a 2023 sequel, ‘The Food Block 2’.

The summer of 1980. The Moscow Olympics. A small Pioneer camp on the banks of the Volga. The pioneers fall out, make up, play tricks. Romances start up among the young leaders. The river bus brings in drums of milk and boxes of pasta. Life in the quirky gingerbread cake buildings of the camp establishes its rhythms against the backdrop of the Volga’s ceaseless flow and the sunset’s daily blush over the Zhiguli mountains. But something, or someone, is at work. Something that no one except twelve-year-old Valerka can see for what it is. When he confides in the young leader Igor, only to be disbelieved, Valerka finds himself carrying the burden of what he knows completely alone.

Some of the children and young leaders are becoming vampires. Their bodily changes are accompanied by a sharpened and growing devotion to the Soviet system and ideology. Soviet symbols, such as the pioneer tie, acquire new meanings and find new uses. ‘Correctness’ begins to flourish, even as blood is drunk.

Valerka resists the vampires on principle, while Igor finally joins forces with him only when what is happening touches him personally. Together, they brace themselves to do battle with a power they have no reason to believe they can withstand.

‘The Food Block’, in Alexei Ivanov’s words, speaks of how state ideology, even where its design is oriented towards the ideal, is nevertheless something dead, while, love and friendship are forever living. Ivanov brings us a gallery of colourful characters: idealistic, dogged Valerka; seventeen-year-old Igor, groping to find himself and on the way finding his first love, the spiky and beautiful Veronika; Valerka’s own girlfriend, the blithely self-absorbed Anastasika; the drunken doctor who knows too much; the honest, infuriating Soviets Whistler and Irina; the bantering, over-energetic boys; the bully Beklya and the siren-punk Zhanka; the partly paralysed scullery maid Nyura; the old Civil War veteran Serp Ivanych; the steadily-growing cast of bloodsuckers and their ‘carcasses’. Through them, Ivanov gives us both a thriller and a book of subtlety and depth. Building steadily towards its enthralling climax, ‘The Food Block’ crackles with delightful dialogue, exudes humour that does not make fun, and explores with apparently effortless insight the loves and energy, hopes and doubts, and fears and courage of childhood and youth.

The Russian original can be enjoyed in book, audiobook and television serial form.