During
Utopiales 2014, the International Science Fiction Festival held in Nantes,
France between October, 29th and November, 3rd, the winner of the 6th
edition of the Utopiales European Award, rewarding a speculative fiction novel
or collection published in French during an literary season, has been announced:
“Sumerki” (Dusk) by Dmitry Glukhovsky, translated by Denis E. Savine (Éditions L’Atalante)
When Dmitry Alexeievitch,
a penniless translator, insists at his agency to obtain a new contract he has
no idea that his life will be turned upside down. As he starts translating the first
chapter he is offered nothing new, although it is a strange text that unfolds: the story
of an expedition in the unexplored forests of Yucatan in the sixteenth century,
an army led by the Franciscan priest Diego de Landa. But the chapters given to
him are offered one by one by a mysterious sponsor. Also, when the agency employer is
brutally murdered and the dangers reported in the document interfere with his
everyday life Dmitry Alexeievitch gets scared. From the shadows of the past,
are the Mayan gods and demons desperate to protect forbidden knowledge? Unless,
of course, this Spanish manuscript has made him lose his mind. While the world
around him is devastated by hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis, time is
running out for discovering the truth.
Sumerki, a mix of esoteric suspense
and magic realism, is the second novel of Dmitry Glukhovsky. It is as much an
intimately involvement as it is a flamboyant and gloomy vision of nowadays Moscow.
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