The Last Pioneer

The narrator guides the reader through the childhood of Dima—a time spent between Siberian swamps and Ural vacations—in those very last quiet years of the Soviet Union, when no one yet understands that the familiar world is about to disappear.

Middle-earth, Narnia, Zurbagan, the USSR… These are places that no longer exist—or never existed—but still you want to return to them. “The Last Pioneer” is a bright and nostalgic, funny and sometimes sad book about Soviet childhood in the late eighties.

Dima lives in Siberia—in an oil city on a sand embankment amid endless swamps, and every summer he goes to the Urals to his grandparents. He and his friends grow up, play, and mature, unaware that their carefree time coincided with the sunset of an entire era: in childhood, happiness seems natural and eternal. This book is a way to return to that time—at least for a few minutes.