The Slaughterhouse

14 hrs. 36 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Åsa Ericsdotter

Narrator Ivan Litvinov

Description

In Sweden, the Health Party comes to power. How much do people need to become enthusiastic? An ideally moderate political stance—and, of course, a vivid charismatic leader: young, slim, energetic. Changes begin in society, first unsettling only a few. Excess weight can’t be good, right? But now a so‑called fat‑muscle quota determines even whether a person is fit for work. If your fat‑muscle ratio is above the government’s norm, then you’re welcome—there’s nothing for you in the public sector! In schools, instead of normal subjects, children are now taught dietetics and sports, and churches are converted into fitness centers. The level of absurdity and cruelty grows every day. Exceptional thinness is elevated into an absolute cult. Everyone who doesn’t fit the new standard becomes outcasts and marginal people whose civil and human rights are stripped away right before your eyes—justifying it as the benefit of society… And then, one by one, they begin to disappear. Where are they taken? What do they do to them?

When a young historian named Landon loses his girlfriend, he goes looking for her.

Osa Eriksdottir’s gripping and horrifyingly realistic dystopian novel “The Slaughter” tells how easily the veneer of civilization slips off a person; how simple it is to hand your body over to social control, to surrender to the rhetoric of hatred, and start accepting discrimination as the norm. How easy it is, one day, to wake up and discover you’re in a totalitarian state built not by someone else—but by yourself…