Alexey Viktorovich Ivanov

2008. An ordinary driver, a veteran of the Afghan war, single-handedly carries out a daring robbery of an armored truck transporting money for a large shopping center. This is how the long history of a powerful and active alliance of Afghan veterans—be it a community organization, a business association, or a criminal gang; in the lawless nineties, when this alliance formed and gained strength, it was difficult to tell them apart—comes to an end in the million-strong but backwater city of Batuy.Loneliness is not something inflicted on a person by others, but something a person inflicts on themselves.This is called “deferred happiness syndrome.” A person wears themselves out with worries, promising themselves that they will finish everything—and then rest. But it never happens that way. Such a time never comes. And we won’t have a reincarnation either. It’s either here and now, or never and nowhere.But the novel is not about money or crime, but about the storm in the soul. About the desperate search for a reason why a person should trust another person in a world where only predators triumph—but without trust, it is impossible to live. The novel is about how greatness and despair have the same roots. About how each of us risks inadvertently falling into the storm and never being able to escape it, because the storm is a refuge and a trap, salvation and ruin, a great consolation and the eternal pain of life.People are victims of frustration. They focus on a certain complex of experiences, perceptions, and ideas and cannot step beyond its limits, where the world is beautiful.The design of the series is an art project in which all of Alexei Ivanov’s novels are designed by artists working in very different styles—as different as the novels themselves. The cover for the novel Nenastye was designed by Daniil Vyatkin.