6. "Saspyga" by Karina Shainyan

Chilling horror story about how hard it is not to succumb to the temptation to lose humanity. his is a great novel that describes the impact of Russian-Ukranian war on ordinary Russian people without ever using the W-word. 📚💙

I would love to trade all the trumps and putins of the world for just one more Bowie's album so much

Incidentally, Russian law has little to no problem with gay characters if they are miserable. The only censored episode in the novel is the one where gay character is, for just two pages, truly happy 📚💙

Btw if you wonder how can a novel with one of its main characters being gay be published in Russia, this is how. bsky.app/profile/lamp... 📚💙

5. "Day" 📚💙
A magnificent novel full of sadness and love, about how a slightly dysfunctional family can still be a real family. Perhaps one of the best books I've read in years, I can't believe I've avoided the happiness of reading Cunningham for so long. This year, I'm going to fix that mistake.

4. "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus" 📚💙

What a great novel — about responsibility and irresponsibility, about a patriarchal world that is all the more destructive the more it believes in its own infallibility, about the harshness of the human heart — but also about the kindness of people

3. "Mom, I ate an elephant" 📚💙

A wonderful young adult novel about two girls who met at a chess board, and then found out that the world is even more complicated than the most difficult chess game. The title is double entendre and can be read as "Mom, I captured the bishop"

2. "Poems and things. How poets of the Silver Age became fashion icons" 📚💙

A wonderful non-fiction story that sweeps the dust off four classics from the Russian school curriculum and tells about them through their favorite clothes and other things.

1. Sobakistan. The Garden of Bones 📚💙

A rather shocking comic book, which at first seems like a homage to Chekhov, but soon stumbles and falls into the lovecraftian abysses. The unpredictability of the comic franchise about the dictatorship of anthropomorphic dogs never ceases to amaze me

Russia has more than enough ignorant violent assholes already, thank you very much. How about all of them just hold hands and leave Earth for Mars?

I believe censorship is terrible, but if it exists, it’s the publishers’ duty to make it visible—to show readers what their repressive state is depriving them of.

Personally, I think this approach has merit. It makes censorship visible, bold, and undeniable. For instance, in 2019, Yuval Noah Harari rewrote parts of 21 Lessons for the 21st Century for the Russian edition, removing criticism of Putin.

All of this, of course, is done with the authors’ consent. The choice is stark: either the book is published in this form, or it’s not published at all. Many authors opt for the latter, but some agree to the former.

A biography of Pier Paolo Pasolini was treated the same way: about 20% of the book was blacked out, including parts of footnotes and poems. The entire print run of the censored version of the biography sold out in a single day: many Russian readers consider it an important document of the era.

For example, this is how Michael Cunningham’s novel Day appears. One of the book's central episodes is blacked out. The scene is far from being pornographic; it’s a tender and almost innocent depiction of love—but it’s the kind of love that is prohibited in Russia.

For example, my neighbor recently visited a book fair and brought me a gift: a book about the Russian-Georgian war and two stickers with cats — he purposely found those that look exactly like our cats.