The Snail on the Slope

The Snail on the Slope takes place in two worlds. One is the Administration, an institution run by a surreal, Kafkaesque bureaucracy whose aim is to govern the forest below. The other is the Forest, a place of fear, weird creatures, primitive people and violence. Peretz, who works at the Administration, wants to visit the Forest. Candide crashed in the Forest years ago and wants to return to the Administration. Their journeys are surprising and strange, and readers are left to puzzle out the mysteries of these foreign environments. The Strugatskys themselves called The Snail on the Slope “the most complete and important" of their works.

“The Snail on the Slope may be the most dizzyingly concentrated dose of the Strugatskys’ strange and powerful medicine.” —Jonathan Lethem

“[Arkady and Boris Strugatsky] open windows in the mind and then fail to close them all, so that, putting down one of their books, you feel a cold breeze still lifting the hairs on the back of your neck.” —New York Times

"Approached as a meditation on the human inability to comprehend more than a very small part of the universe, this is a surprisingly satisfying, if often perplexing, work." —Publishers Weekly

Arkady (1925–1991) and Boris (1933–2012) Strugatsky were the most famous and popular Russian writers of science fiction, with over 25 novels and novellas to their names, including Roadside Picnic, The Doomed City, Hard to Be a God and The Inhabited Island. Olena Bormashenko is the acclaimed translator of the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic and Hard to Be a God.