The best people of the city

Katerina Kozhevina is a prose writer, a sociologist by profession. Born in Omsk, moved to St. Petersburg. For the novel “The Best People of the City” was awarded the Lyceum Award.

A small city on Sakhalin lives according to its own laws, and it is difficult to distinguish what year 2018 or 1998 is now. Suddenly the usual order collapses: a large oil company decides to build a new plant in Kryukov. Muscovite Lena goes on an unusual journey to the ends of the world. To save her career, she will have to gain the trust of local residents and become a guide between the worlds: the province and the capital.

The heroine of the novel knows where the globe has gone from the geography office. Now we know: here he is. “The best people of the city” are the ideal globe of Russia from Moscow to the very outskirts, convex, embossed, terribly similar and drawn in the smallest details. Restraul, almost strictly and with piercing understanding, Katerina Kozhevina tells the story of a single girl in difficulty, exciting, frighteningly accurate and wildly ridiculous, but in fact gives a cut of the history of a huge country and very different people: Muscovites and Far East, office plankton and herdorous and farthest. "Correct men", chapters of administrations and driveways, fashionable DJs and shamans, superstitious personnel and dreamy gopnits. This is really the best people, and they will not be better - unless, of course, they learn love and patience. Katerina’s novel Kozhevina confirms that this is possible - and what only this is needed.
Shamil Idiatullin