The Gray House

For hundreds of thousands of people, “The House in Which…” is a password book used to recognize “their own.” Even before the paperback edition was published, “The House in Which…” became a sensation and won a readers’ vote for “The Big Book” prize.

For ten years the novel hasn’t left bestseller lists. It has received literary awards: “Russian Prize,” “Student Booker,” “The Big Book” (audience award), “Portal,” “The Wanderer,” and others. Translated into ten languages.

“ I envy those who are holding ‘The House’ for the first time right now. Come in, settle down. Don’t go to the pheasants and try not to get lost in the Forest. Coffee and other drinks are on the second floor. Believe me, you’ll stay here for a long time.” (c) Galina Yuzefovich

On the outskirts of the city, among standard new-builds, stands the Grey House—where Sphinx, the Blind Man, the Lord, Tabaqui, Macedonian, Black, and many others live. No one knows for sure whether the Lord truly comes from the noble line of dragons, but the Blind Man is indeed blind, and Sphinx is wise and mysterious. Tabaqui, of course, isn’t a jackal, though he loves to profit off other people’s things.

For each resident of the House there is a nickname, and each person lived in it, in a single day, as much as we sometimes don’t live in the Outside—and even in an entire lifetime. The House either welcomed each one or rejected them. The House guarded countless secrets, and the banal “skeletons in the closet” are only the most understandable corner of an invisible world—where you can’t enter from the Outside and where the usual laws of space and time stop working.

The House is something far more than just an orphanage for children whom their parents abandoned. The House is their separate universe.