Sankya

Zakhar Prilepin was born near Ryazan in 1975. He led an unsettled life before dedicating himself to writing, spending time as a student, a laborer, a journalist and as a soldier, serving with the Special Forces in Chechnya. Prilepin has come to the public attention not only as one of the best writers of his generation, but as a committed, and often controversial, political activist on behalf of the 'Other Russia' coalition. While living in Nizhny Novgorod, he was the regional editor of independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta (New Newspaper). He took part in the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, but left the territory of the DPR in July 2018. He has since then been residing in Russia.Prilepin's combination of lucid prose and social consciousness has made him one of the most popular and acclaimed writers in Russia today, drawing comparisons with the Russian classics. His novel Sankya, which draws on his own experiences to depict life among young political extremists, was shortlisted for the Russian Booker in 2007, when it also won the Yasnaya Polyana Award and the Best Foreign Novel of the Year Award in China. His novel The Monastery is winner of the Book of the Year Award in 2014, a winner of the Book Runet-2014 Award, and winner of the Big Book Prize in 2014. Prelipin's Sankya and Sin are both available from Glagoslav Publications.

Sasha "Sankya" Tishin, and his friends are part of a generation stuck between eras. They don't remember the Soviet Union, but they also don't believe in the promise of opportunity for all in the corrupt, capitalistic new Russia. They belong to an extremist group that wants to build a better Russia by tearing down the existing one. Sasha, alternately thoughtful and naïve, violent and tender, dispassionate and romantic, hopeful and hopeless, is torn between the dying village of his youth and the soulless capital, where he and his friends stage rowdy protests and do battle with the police. When they go too far, Sasha finds himself testing the elemental force of the protest movement in Russia and in himself.Originally published in 2006, Sankya is even more relevant today as a prism through which to view the recent large-scale actions against Vladimir Putin. It is Prilepin's first novel and is widely considered his best.Glagoslav Publications neither shares nor assumes responsibility for author's political and other views and opinions as expressed or interpreted in this book.