Means of Communication

Save yourself by saving someone else. The main message of Xenia Burzhskaya’s new novel “Message Routes” is that two eras—1936 and 2045—intertwine tightly: the historical utopia of a young Soviet state and the harsh anti-utopia of the future.

Nina in 1936 is the wife of the commissioner of the People’s Commissariat of Railways and a friend of the “enemies of the people.” Nina in 2045 is an artificial intelligence that fell in love with a neurochip developer in the service of a totalitarian state. What do these two Ninas have in common? Both—human and machine—turn out to be able to save a child’s life, going against the law and their own purpose.