"You can't see anything with your metaphorical cataracts.
                                          Your blindness is your bliss."

Random chats with my Russian family over the phone, including Happy Birthday or Happy New Year talks, often detour into political area every time "When will we see you again?" is brought up because the answer is always the same and can't be apolitical. I smoothed it over those three-years-and-counting not to unnerve the relatives, not to hurt our relationships, the choice that many people I know made, while some preferred to stop communicating. At first, the answer to that question began with "when Putin dies"1, then turned into "when the regime falls", then into "when the situation changes", and finally, but not ultimately into proverbial "as soon as I can", with no exact degree of soonness. They would probably be very upset by what I write and publish if they were to read it—the case unlikely. I smooth no angle here in regards of the war and my position, which is the main point of writing all that in the first place.

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At one point, archetypically or dialectically, there appears a hero, a heretic, a rebel, a knight, a prince from the faraway land who impugns the dragon’s regime and validity of his power and aims to overthrow the creature and free the townspeople to lead them to the better, brighter future, where there’s no dragon, no racket, no sacrificed virgins and everything is tiptop splendorous. The heretic-hero sees the dragon as the main and the only problem and by his logic, when the dragon is gone, the problem is gone. But is it really enough to kill the dragon? What is that precisely which is going to be killed?

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I've never properly pondered what it would be like, what it would mean for me and cost me to write and publish an anti-war, anti-totalitarian, blatantly anti-government, book if I were still in Russia. The truth is, I would likely not do it at all. I feel somewhat privileged and even lucky, but not in a sense of bold achievement or good fortune akin winning a lottery, but in a sense of holding in a special position, wherein "special" means that the position provides relative safety and an opportunity to speak against the regime without fear of prosecution. After all, I'm in the UK, far away from that regime, Russian police won't knock on my door in the morning, won't put me in prison, won't torture me and won't send me to fight in their war. They won't even read this or any anti-state statement I've put online over the past, almost three years, including my book. I'm a little man to them, though it wouldn't, as we well know, stop them from ruining my life for some words put online or in print. To wield an opportunity to speak and to exert it comes as a personal moral duty, even though it's fortified not by bravery but by recklessness in my case. I still have family in Russia and although they are safe, I sometimes feel my actions could somehow have consequences for them. In essence, it's irrational, but that's what the terrorist regime wants—to instil terror in you.

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Darya Serenko, an activist who, along with the Feminist Anti-War Resistance, was collecting and analysing those dreams, described the reasoning behind the project:

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I’m pleased to announced that my new book "Deleted Scenes from the Bestselling Utopian Novel" is officially launched!

“Deleted Scenes” a surreal dystopian narrative set in the remote northern island of Novo Tsarstvo. Through a mosaic of perspectives, the author explores the lives of ordinary people struggling under a totalitarian regime. The novel combines psychological horror with dark absurd humour to examine themes of truth, violence, freedom, and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of oppression.

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Buy: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Waterstones | eBook | other places
Rate and review: Goodreads

This is how 3.9kg of literature (and more later) look like:

The aforementioned further ado:

It’s been two years since I drafted the first words for this book. At first I thought it would be a rather more traditional character-based novel with a coherent plot that I even outlined multiple times but none of that worked out. Perhaps I’m not able to write a rather more traditional character-based novel with a coherent plot, perhaps it wasn’t the story I really wanted to tell or the real events alluded in the book haven’t yet concluded hence it was too early for that kind of novel, who knows.

I cut a significant portion of that coherence from the copious early drafts, completely deleted scenes that didn’t satisfy me, stashed some that had potential. That envisioned novel was condensed into a shorter, more impactful novella about propaganda, oppression, violence, and the cost of conformism—the part one of the book, and some of the deleted scenes turned into interconnected stories—the part two of the book.

A single protagonist became many: the disillusioned, the resistance, and those caught in between as they navigate the totalitarian landscape and try to stay human in a dehumanising environment. Through their struggles, I wanted to explore the nature of truth, violence, and freedom, whilst showing the enduring capacity of the human spirit and childlike imagination in the face of oppression, as many characters of the book happed to be children.

Real unsettling scenarios became surreal, grotesque situations were elevated to absurdity, paving a way to dark humour, gut-wrenching psychological horror, and poignant revelations at some points. There we have the senile Tsar who rules with lies, an evil professor who turns people into pig-faced demons, snow angels that have become acts of rebellion, black cats that are outlawed, television in human form (considered the best character by my wife) who knocks on your door in the morning, and many other peculiar characters, including already famous Fluffislav the Fearsome.

And yet, the book still has an overarching narrative, a mosaic of perspectives. It’s expressed through common themes—dystopian, anti-totalitarian, anti-war; common universe—remote northern island of Novo Tsarstvo, twisted twin sibling of contemporary Russia after the invasion of Ukraine (and in many other time periods, honestly); common images, tropes, symbols, subtle self-referential elements, and, most importantly, the order of the stories. I orchestrated them carefully to create that sense of what people deem “coherence” and tell the story that unfolds behind the deleted scenes. Each of the them, be it a standalone story, a little embedded vignette, a randomly appearing dreams or nightmares haunting the characters, are aimed to explore the psychological toll of tyranny, the effect of it on people, and ways of resisting it.

The main concept is, in the northern island of Novo Tsarstvo, a government-pronounced utopia, existed a well-known bestselling novel. Some scenes, however, did not comply to the utopian standards and were deleted and presented as a report to the chief censor. Thus, as you might rightfully reckon, both “deleted scenes” and “bestselling utopian novel” have double meaning and a double dose of irony behind it: inside the book and beyond it.

This is a deeply personal work for me, despite only parts of it mirror and encode my own experience, and it’s not even written in Russian (though some of the drafts were, as I usually do). It’s an adaptation of lurid dreams, personal anxieties and worries, and, to be completely honest, an attempt to rationalise the horror happening in the world, to cope, and to channel somewhere all the accumulated anger and hate towards the Russian state and its deeds, while still trying to preserve hope for the future change (as the last few chapters hint).

Some of you might’ve read the deleted scenes separately when I published them on my website and in my newsletter during the past year, most of you will read them for the first time. This book presents a polished, slightly extended, and rearranged version of pervious works. I’ve put a lot of effort, emotions, and nerves, to create something unique, something that would stay for you for more than a few evenings, and make you think, laugh (often nervously), or maybe cry, to give you a chance to experience something that you, thankfully, have never experienced; to create images, characters, and scenes, be it deleted or not, that you will never forget, and, judging by the feedback from my friends and early readers, I believe I succeeded.

So… Have I interested in reading it? If yes, then grab your copy!

If you want to get a “taste” of the book, I offer you one of the stories to read for free on my website—“Dream”, a story about a sniper who dreams of assassinating the dictator.

Physical editions

The book is available in three formats:

• Softcover (ISBN: 978-1-0687677-0-8)

• Hardcover (ISBN: 978-1-0687677-2-2),

• and ebook.

It is available for online purchase in many places around the world from the most popular retailers. Try searching it with ISBN or title in one of your favourite bookshops or even search engines.

Some places to order your physical copy:

Amazon (Universal link)

Barnes & Noble (US)

Waterstones (US)

Foyles (UK)

Hugendubel (DE)

If you want to buy it but experience issues with finding or ordering it in your country, you can always write me to vanya [at] nova-nevedoma [dot] com or DM me, and I’ll sort it out for you!

Any other inquiries are welcome, too.

Digital editions

For ebook, there are two options so far (more coming later):

Buy epub and pdf in my store

Or become my literary patron for $5/mo or $50/y and download your copy as well as my previous (and future) digital books from the Patron Library at Nova-Nevedoma.com.

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Rate and write a review!

Regardless of where you buy my book, please, please, please rate the book and write a review after you finish it.

Rate and Review on Goodreads

I would immediately send the most radiant beams of appreciation towards you!

And of course, share this book with your friends, family, followers, and everyone, really. The world must know! I want more people to read it.

On this note, I scarper and will be back soon with more exciting news. In the upcoming months I’ll be talking more about this book and the process and events surrounding it.

Beams of appreciation,

Vanya

Thank you very much everyone who was involved in making this book real and whoever helped me and supported me on my journey. LOVE YOU!

Also, special thanks to Jeanne and Andrew for the lovely drumroll at the beginning!

A few days ago, my mother and I had another argument about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. For her, I was once again “a traitor”, although this time she didn't say it outright, just one of those young people whose minds had been warped by the West. For me, she was once again someone who supports the regime's actions, whether she consciously chose that stance or not, one of those people whose minds had been warped by Putin, yet each of us believed ourself to be right. As usual, she put forward arguments formulated in the same way they're articulated in the pro-government media, while I, as usual, tried to prove that killing people on the territory of another country is wrong and must be stopped. My verbal rhetorical skills are nothing, and in such situations, I tend to act more emotionally than rationally, so the dispute ultimately ends up right back where it started—we change the subject. It's still better than not talking at all, but each time there's a palpable tension between us, like an invisible wall of disappointment, a pain born of irreversibility and a longing for that "before" when I didn't have to think about such things.

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But the key aspect of this epoch is not merely that the world changed, but rather the consequences of those changes, which themselves had not yet happened. Instead, there was an anticipation of something even bigger, a widespread feeling that the old order was crumbling, but the shape of the new was yet to be determined.

The time period I am referring to is none other than the 1890s, as you might have guessed.

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