When asked about his title, the author gives an answer that leads into the future. "I love snow. Snow covers the earth and everything becomes beautiful. There are the upheavals, all the contradictions of everyday life, and then it snows and the world is beautiful," says Vladimir Sorokin in conversation about his novel, which, like Pushkin and Tolstoy, bears the title Метель ( Snowstorm ) and, at first glance, appears to be a condensation, an intertext, of the Russian blizzard tradition. "If you're out and about and get caught in a blizzard, that's it. It's a beautiful phenomenon, but also a terrible, fateful event. My story actually has three protagonists: the doctor, his coachman, and the blizzard. In the end, the third wins."

Varvara Shmykova

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16 - 26 Aug, 2025

The blizzard · Salzburger Festspiele

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