“Here Sasha and I are on our way, on the road, walking along a strip of asphalt through the woods. Around us it is May, the first green leaves, the first butterflies. After the winter we crawl out of Moscow into the big wide world as blind as moles, crusted with fungus and mildew. We can’t think straight, we blink in the light, dizzy in the fresh air. When you see that first butterfly, friend, you know you’ve survived another winter.”
From the excerpted chapter “New Spring” in Irina Bogatyreva’s debut novel Off the Beaten Tracks, translated by Arch Tait. The book, along with the two other short novels published together with it in the collection of the same name, are set in the subculture of Russian hitchhiking.
Read more Sunday European Fiction.
Photo – Hitchhikers by Rondal Partridge, NARA, 1940/wikimedia commons
literalab 
Leave a Reply