The Dead Lake - Softcover

'A haunting and resonant fable.' Boyd Tonkin, INDEPENDENT ------ 'A tantalising mixture of magical and grim realism ... a powerful study of alienation and environmental catastrophe.' David Mills, SUNDAY TIMES ------ 'A poetic masterpiece, a novella of shocking legacies, alien beauty and blistering emotional intensity.' Pam Norfolk, LANCASHIRE EVENING POST ------ 'A writer of immense poetic power.' Kapka Kassabova, GUARDIAN ------ 'A novella which draws on myth, fairy tale, poetry and traditional story-telling, it stirs them together to create an unusual parable of a modern arms race cruelly impacting on a traditional way of life.' Elizabeth Buchan, DAILY MAIL ------ 'This superb novella ... reads like a modern fairy-tale, full of a surreal yet mundane horror.' Lesley McDowell, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY ------ 'Central Asian storytelling at its best.' Marion James, TODAY'S ZAMAN

LONG-LISTED FOR THE INDEPENDENT FOREIGN FICTION PRIZE 2015 ------- LONG-LISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2016 ------ INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2014 -------- GUARDIAN READERS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2014 ------- A haunting Russian tale about the environmental legacy of the Cold War. Yerzhan grows up in a remote part of Soviet Kazakhstan where atomic weapons are tested. As a young boy he falls in love with the neighbour's daughter and one evening, to impress her, he dives into a forbidden lake. The radioactive water changes Yerzhan. He will never grow into a man. While the girl he loves becomes a beautiful woman. ------ Why Peirene chose to publish this book: 'Like a Grimm's fairy tale, this story transforms an innermost fear into an outward reality. We witness a prepubescent boy's secret terror of not growing up into a man. We also wander in a beautiful, fierce landscape unlike any other we find in Western literature. And by the end of Yerzhan's tale we are awe-struck by our human resilience in the face of catastrophic, man-made, follies.' Meike Ziervogel, Publisher