Empty Trains of 2022

Dmitry Danilov is a playwright (“Seryozha is very stupid”), a prose writer (“Horizontal position”), and a poet. Winner of “Yasnaya Polyana” and the “Moscow Art Prize” (the novel “Sasha, hello!”), as well as “Golden Mask” (the play “A man from Podolsk”). “Empty Trains of 2022” is a cycle of essays about traveling by rail, in which reflections on Russian everyday life are interwoven with portraits of fellow passengers and the author’s stories about himself. Slow, unhurried contemplation of familiar things in an attempt to see something more in them—this is the quintessence of Danilov’s style. “Dmitry Danilov gives the impression of a person who has just gotten up from the couch for a short time, just so he can quickly get back to it again. In other words, such a classic Oblomov… So when it turned out he has an unusual hobby—traveling on small trains along remote railway branch lines—I wasn’t surprised. Some call it ‘meditative tourism.’ But when a writer does it, you get a short circuit and a flare-up.” Pavel Basinsky “It was good when most passengers had dispersed, when there were nameless stations and emptiness. It was good when the passenger opposite suddenly said, ‘Have a good trip.’ And everything else was good too, if you think about it.”