The Water Knife

11 hrs. 30 min.

Language Russian

Author Paolo Bacigalupi

Narrator Evgeny Perepelitsa

Description

By the middle of the 21st century, the southwestern states of America are experiencing a water shortage. Water resources have become a commodity: government officials and stock-market players are forced to learn new parameters—flow rates in cubic feet per second, amounts of snow and deviations from normal thawing, the depth and filling of dams and reservoirs. The threat of once-fertile lands turning into dusty, rocky deserts is quite real. California takes the initiative from other states, plays against the rules, trying to monopolize the life-giving flow of the Colorado River by bribing corrupt politicians and cutting off towns and small cities from water arteries.

And meanwhile, desperate people listen to the preachers of the “Cheerful Perry” cult, who believe that God will send them rain. Officials continue producing tons of useless paperwork. The poor quietly die… And a young journalist covering the death of the city of Phoenix dares to look behind the scenes of the water distribution system. What will her dangerous investigation bring?