The Two Hundred and Third Day of Winter

The protagonist of Olga Ptitseva’s new dystopian novel lives in a country where eternal winter has been declared. It has been snowing for two hundred days, food is rationed, and dissidents are sent to the freezer. Nyuta cannot leave, as her background in biology makes her essential to the “Party of Cold”—she must urgently develop selective varieties of frost-resistant plants. Meanwhile, strange events are occurring in the city: yellow daffodils bloom in the middle of snowdrifts. The local authorities are convinced that the opposition is to blame—they are the ones trying to destabilize the situation.