The Last Pioneer

The story of Dima, a boy who comes of age between the Siberian swamps and summer holidays in the Urals, lets the reader relive the last peaceful days of the Soviet era — without yet suspecting that this epoch will soon disappear forever.

Middle-earth, Narnia, Zurbagan, the Soviet Union… What do they have in common? They are worlds that do not exist on the map. But the dream of returning there still stays with us.

"The Last Pioneer" is a warm, nostalgic, funny, and at times sad book about Dima and his Soviet childhood at the end of the 1980s. He grows up in Siberia — in an oil town built on sand in the middle of endless swamps — and every summer travels to the Urals to visit his grandmother and grandfather. Dima and his friends live their ordinary, carefree lives and do not realize that their growing up coincides with the decline of the Soviet Union: after all, childhood always seems like the happiest time. This book is a reliable way to return there, at least for a few minutes.