Four Thousand Words reviews 'Metro 2033', by Dmitry Glukhovsky

It is hard to know where to begin reviewing a novel like Metro 2033, as it is stylistically asymmetrical from anything that I have previously read, while at the same time being a novel of outstanding ambition and scale that nonetheless does not quite manage to reach the heights that it sets itself.

The novel follows the story of Artyom, an unremarkable young man who is one of a clutch of just a few thousand survivors of the human race.  Born after a cataclysmic event that has rendered the surface world uninhabitable for humans, he, his step-father and his friends make their home in VDNKh, the northernmost occupied station in the Moscow Metro.

Warned by a wanderer of a terrible looming danger, Artyom accepts the task of travelling deep into the metro to the legendary city of Polis to warn the residents and ask for assistance.  On the way, he encounters all manner of ghoulish horrors, political refugees and larger-than-life characters.


Dystopian fiction has become rather passe of late, with the last couple of years seeing a huge influx of self-published works set in worlds gone wrong.  However, I have never before encountered a world as genuinely confusing and terrifying as Glukhovsky's metro.  He immediately sets out a sense of foreboding and threat.  'The metro consisted of numerous passages and corridors, spreading into the depths of a gigantic cobweb.'  When describing a tunnel in the new, nightmarish low-light world, he manages to make the world itself seem like something alive.  'As porous as a sponge, it greedily swallowed the rays of their flashlight, which was hardly sufficient to illuminate even a foot ahead.'  The action takes place across a version of the real Metro network, and my paper copy of the book has a much-needed map that is very helpful to reference.  E-book readers may be resigned to visualising the network instead.
 
For those like myself who have never known the joys of Moscow's staggeringly-beautiful real-life system, the fall from grace is captured perfectly.  As well as the threat of natural disasters like floods and cave-ins, the metro is inhabited with all manner of mutants, psychic assaults and other unholy ways to die.  And die people do.  'He stopped and turned his head to the left so sharply that Artyom could hear how his vertebrae cracked.  "I've died.  There is no more me." And, straight as a cross-tie, he fell face down.'

Glukhovsky cleverly avoids the preferred dystopian device of one-government control.  Instead, his Metro has a chaotic tribal system based around beliefs in which communists battle fascists, religious groups fight with savages and the Kremlin is both possessed by demons and used as a repository for biological weapons.  The single underlying currency that unites everyone is bullets, but even they are no protection if you cannot guard your mind.

So massive is the scope of this tale that it is hardly surprising that there are loose ends and unresolved dilemmas.  I'm hopeful that some of these may end up being resolved in the follow-up, 'Metro 2034' but there are so many abandoned threads and so much background information that it is sometimes difficult to see what as a reader you are supposed to be following.  Characters appear, are built up and then discarded in so many short paragraphs.  The feeling is akin to browsing through an otherworldly junk shop containing memorabilia from Alice in Wonderland, the Communist Manifesto and the story of the Tower of Babel, but with nothing quite taking your fancy enough for you to want to take home with you.

The other element of the story that suffers as a result of the scope is the rhythm, which is horribly disjointed in places and goes from fast-moving to snail-crawling and back again without warning.  It is worth noting that the book was serialised for free on the internet prior to release as a novel, so this may go some way towards explaining the ebb and flow of the narrative.

A little side note about characters is worthy too.  Artyom is a simple everyman with limited ability to defend himself from the psychic assaults that crush other people.  His character is largely unexamined until close to the end of the book when his survival against the odds up to that point lends him the feeling that he is invulnerable.  Other characters, such as the irrepressible Khan, are woefully underused.  There are no prominent female characters at all.  While I recognise that Russia currently (and in the context of the future world presented here) may be a patriarchal society, it is good to note that this oversight is rectified in 'Metro 2034'.

If you can get past the frustrating gear-changes that threaten to derail the narrative, there is a lot to experience and enjoy in Metro 2033.  It goes without saying that this book will not be for everyone, but fans of horror, politics, science-fiction and dark humour will all find something here.  Even if this doesn't look like the sort of book you would expect to enjoy, I would urge that you try it anyhow.  The Metro is just too captivating...

A Nation Enthused, A Pussy Riot and A Violent Slaughter

As I sit here writing my first blog entry for weeks, the world's Paralympians are smiling and waving to the assembled media in London. The Paralympics is a wonderful addendum to a massively successful summer of British sport, although there is less of the glitz that was seen in the opening ceremony of the Olympics proper a few weeks ago. There's a different mood to these games, one less to do with political arguments about playing fields, sport funding and infrastructure investment than it is to do with unique individuals who have overcome tremendous struggles simply to be here at all.

Of course, the Olympics were a complete success - though no thanks to the sponsors, or to the private companies who continue to fleece the taxpayer in the name of enterprise. Team GB surpassed all expectations, nailing down gold after gold. The Tories antipathy to the modern NHS was exposed by Danny Boyle's deviously clever opening ceremony, which won over journalists worldwide with its simple, understated charm. It turns out that Britain still does a few things well - and it's cheering to think that the army, the volunteers and the athletes all played a part in something that has been central to restoring the national pride.

There has been other news too. In Russia, the decision to imprison anti-Putin musicians Pussy Riot has been condemned worldwide but most curiously by the US, whose administration see no hypocrisy even though they have now kept Bradley Manning, the soldier suspected of releasing information to Wikileaks, in custody for over 800 days without trial. The decision by Ecuador to offer political asylum to Julian Assange is now unavoidably tied into the rape accusations from Sweden that he will not be able to answer without risking extradition to the US. These incidents, coupled with the British establishment's response to the peaceful Occupy movement in the UK, continue to raise questions about freedom of speech and human rights advocacy in the West.

In perhaps the most appalling news of the summer, a number of South African miners have been shot dead in a pay dispute at a Lonmin mine in Marikana. The events have been condemned by unions worldwide.

The strike began on August 10, with ten deaths, including police officers and mine security staff, reported within days. On August 16, following fruitless attempts to control the crowd with tear gas, barbed wire and water canons, police hit back in a three-minute live fire barrage that constituted the deadliest force used since the end of apartheid in 1994.

34 men died in that murderous barrage, and the police's use of deadly force is now being questioned as it has emerged that many of the miners may have been shot in the back while facing away from police. The time has come for a full public investigation into the events that transpired at the protest, and all sides to immediately move back to negotiation to resolve the dispute. If necessary, the government needs to become involved and mediate - there can be no acceptance of violence from either side to resolve a pay dispute. If it subsequently transpires that the police acted without due cause, murder charges should be brought against those responsible.

The dispute raises urgent questions about how to address inequality in the Rainbow Nation, questions that will also be asked in other countries as the economic fallout of the worldwide banking crisis continues to spread.

'Vote for Me, It's Like Losing Your Virginity'

Does anyone else remember 'Tarrant on TV'?  For those whose memories of Chris Tarrant only go back as far as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or the tabloid pictures of him being kicked out of his mansion by his furious ex-wife for having it away with a youthful TV researcher, he used to have a show where risque TV adverts from around the world were shown for comedy effect.

Of course, away from the stiff upper lips of flaccid grey Britain, adverts full of innuendo are used for party political broadcast purposes.  In Russia, Vladimir Putin's ruling party have released the following video that compares a young female voter's decision to vote for Putin for the first time with her decision to lose her virginity.

Am I alone in finding this sort of thing slightly sinister? I suppose that people who complain that living in the digital world means that your children are sexualised before the appropriate age will now at least find that they become democratically inclined as well, even if the vote itself is less than democratic.

Still, there's a part of me that would respect an advert for the Conservative Party that ran with the honest slogan - 'Vote for David Cameron, he'll screw the NHS!'

When Time Called Time on Heroes

The significant details in life are often the small ones. The appointments forgotten, the words said or left unsaid, the people we meet and engage with - these are the details that determine the bigger picture in our lives.

When a Tunisian military policewoman insulted and slapped a fruit vendor in the market square of a tiny, unremarkable town just south of Tunis a year ago, she could not have expected that her small act of disrespect and violence would be seen as the trigger that has started a worldwide democratic protest that has inspired and involved the actions of millions worldwide.

That fruit-seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, enraged when his subsequent complaint was ignored, took himself to the local provincial capital building and set himself on fire. Those around him who were similarly upset with years of corrupt dealings with police and local officials, began to protest at the way in which they were treated. So began the Arab Spring, a movement that toppled governments, ended dictatorships and prompted similar explosions of discontent as far afield as Russia and the US.

2011 will be remembered as as a watershed in world history. The most singly defining year since the major financial crisis that has impacted all our lives, this was the year that people worldwide stood up as one and demanded a new form of social contract from the people that governed them. No longer would they accept corrupt systems that saw the richest siphon off the main share of the wealth as long as some reached the rest of us via the trickledown.

The decision of Time magazine to award the title of 'Person of the Year' to 'The Protester' is an interesting one in the context of the small details I mentioned earlier. To those of us in the UK who have defended our rights and the rights of those around us in the last year, it is a moment in which to reflect and be proud of the way in which we have conducted ourselves and been a part of something far more significant than the simple goals we hope to achieve. However, we should also remember that there is a world of difference between our struggles and those of protesters in Russia and the Middle East, who stand up against totalitarian regimes in the full knowledge that some of their number may never return to their homes.

For me, the most telling aspect of Time magazine's decision not to select a person of the year is instead that in a world which is desperately crying out for leadership, not one leader or prominent person of influence has conducted themselves in such a way as to deserve the title. In Russia, Putin is pictured as the pointlessly macho leader of a discontented people. In the US, the UK and Europe, the likes of Barrack Obama, David Cameron and Andrea Merkel stand at broken tillers as their countries swirl in a whirlpool of conflicting financial interests. Worst of all, in Egypt and Syria, strong militaries and politicians like Bashar al-Assad continue to oppress the populations they are supposed to protect and represent.

So arise to defend your rights, protesters, and bear your title with pride. 2011 was the year that you became heroes when your leaders could not.

Will there be a Soviet Spring?

Tensions are high in Russia as former soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev has added his voice to the growing list of individuals calling for Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin to scrap the results of Russia's recent parliamentary elections and start the ballot process from scratch.

Despite widespread allegations of vote rigging and ballot-box stuffing, Putin's United Russia party saw their share of the vote in the Duma (the Russian representative assembly) drop below 50% of the total vote for the first time since Putin came to power twelve years ago. Gorbachev, the Nobel laureate who oversaw the collapse of the Soviet Union, called the elections 'dishonest' and urged the Kremlin to change its authoritarian stance towards pro-democracy protestors.

The new Russian constitution allows a candidate to stand for two six-year terms, meaning that if Putin is re-elected in next year's presidential election, he could retain the power in Russia until 2024. However, those who are pressing for political and economic reform in Russia will realise that the single biggest obstacle to achieving those goals is Putin himself. Questions are rightly beginning to be asked about increasing corruption, politically-motivated arrests and the murders of Putin's opponents.

Following Boris Yeltsin's disastrous free-market reforms in the early nineties, many Russians adopted a stoically fatalist attitude towards politics. Up to now, most Russians had accepted an informal social contract whereby they allowed the state to restrict their personal freedoms to a degree in return for political stability and rising living standards. Now that those living standards are stagnating in the aftermath of the global political crisis and Russia's younger generation are able to compare their lives to those in the rest of Europe because of easy access to travel and Wi-fi (ironically, a consequence of one of the regime's genuine successes), discontent is spilling out onto the streets of Russia's largest cities.

Quality of life is not the only thing waning in the former superpower. Russia's indomitable figurehead is no longer the immensely powerful man that he once was. A million people have seen YouTube videos of Putin being booed at a judo competition in his constituency heartlands. Imprisoned anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny has poked fun at Putin's hardman image and his posts have made him one of the most popular political commentators in Russia.

The state has transported 5,000 police and interior ministry troops into Moscow in response to a Facebook campaign that has attracted a pledge from over 40,000 people to attend demonstrations this weekend in Triumfalnaya Square and Revolution Square in the shadow of the Kremlin. Amnesty International are monitoring the situation and warning that a bloodbath could result if security services are determined to put down the demonstrations at any cost.

As whispers persist about the potential of a Soviet Spring political uprising, both Putin and the pro-democracy campaigners will be holding their breath in the days to come.