The Doomed City

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are widely considered the greatest of Russian science fiction masters, and their most famous work, Roadside Picnic, has enjoyed great popularity worldwide. Yet the novel that was their own favorite, and that readers worldwide have acclaimed as their magnum opus, has never before been published in English. The Doomed City was so politically risky that the Strugatsky brothers kept its existence a complete secret even from their best friends for sixteen years after its completion in 1972. It was only published in Russia in the late 1980s, the last of their works to see publication. It was translated into a host of major European languages, and now appears in English in a major new translation by acclaimed translator Andrew Bromfield. The Doomed City is set in an experimental city bordered by an abyss on one side and an impossibly high wall on the other. Its sole inhabitants are people who were plucked from Earth's history and left to govern themselves under conditions established by Mentors whose purpose seems inscrutable. Andrei Voronin, a young astronomer plucked from Leningrad in the 1950s, is a diehard believer in the Experiment, even though he's now a garbage collector. And as increasingly nightmarish scenarios begin to affect the city, he rises through the political hierarchy, with devastating effect.

 
 
 

"This publication of The Doomed City reveals the Strugatsky's great lost masterwork, an allegorical nightmare metropolis fit for the special atlas that gives home to Kafka's Castle,  Charles Finney's The Unholy City, Rex Warner's Aerodrome, and a very select handful of others." —Jonathan Lethem

"This unsettling and intelligent novel's chief terror resides in its underlying ideas." —Publishers Weekly

"[A] thought-provoking read." —Kirkus Reviews

“A book that carries an Orwellian punch, and a crazed energy all its own.” —Nature

“Put The Doomed City in the bookcase next to 1984, Farenheight 451, Ultima Thule, and Ballard's Kingdom Come. If you aren't a Sci-Fi fan, it fits equally well alongside Animal Farm, Red Harvest, and Catch-22.” —The Huffington Post Canada 

“[Doomed City] will appeal to fans of both classic science fiction and Russian political history.” —Booklist Online