Pavel Zhang is a talented programmer for a major Chinese company in Moscow. A former orphanage kid, he stubbornly pursues his goal: moving from a rapidly colonizing Russia to the mainland, to China—and feels no pangs of conscience even when he learns that his new project will become the foundation for the future state chipification of people. But one day, during a volunteer trip to an orphanage, Zhang meets a person who broke his life years ago and managed to avoid punishment. Memories awaken a darkness in Pavel—one that he himself is afraid of…
“Pavel Zhang and Other River Creatures” is a novel about trauma and its consequences, about moral choice, about justice—and the relativity of this concept—about Chinese and Slavic mythical monsters, and also about real monsters made of flesh and blood. Contains profanity!