Glas 52 – three short novels, all about travelling/hitchhiking through Russia.

This book by and about Russian hitchhikers will take the reader along the endless roads of Siberia, the Urals, the Altai, Central Russia and beyond. Included are Irina Bogatyreva’s short novel Hitchhiking, Igor Savelyev’s Pale City, and Tatiana Mazepina’s Journey towards Paradise – all winners of the Debut Prize.

These hitchhikers call themselves “the last generation of free travelers” – they feel that the world is becoming increasingly more uniform and comfortable and therefore less interesting, and so they hasten to make the most of the places at the back of beyond. Jack Kerouac is their guru; only on the road do they ever feel really free.

“Today an unusually gifted generation is entering Russian literature... Literature has not seen such an influx of energy in a long time.”
Olga Slavnikova, director of the Debut Prize

Irina Bogatyreva was born in 1982 on the Volga. She has won several important literary awards, including the Debut Prize for Auto-Stop.

Tatiana Mazepina was born in 1986. She won the Debut Prize for a travelogue about her Eastern travels.

Igor Savelyev was born in 1983 in Bashkiria. He won the Debut Prize in 2004.