The Ugly Swans
Cover from MacMillan edition
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| Author | Arkady and Boris Strugatsky |
|---|---|
| Original title | Гадкие лебеди |
| Translator | Alice Stone Nakhimovsky and Alexander Nakhimovsky |
| Country | Soviet Union |
| Language | Russian |
| Genre | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher |
Macmillan in U.S., unpublished in USSR until 1987 |
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Publication date
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in samizdat since 1968 |
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Published in English
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1979 1st in U.S. |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| ISBN | (US edition) |
| OCLC | 4593633 |
| 891.7/3/44 | |
| LC Class | PZ4.S919 Ug 1979 PG3476.S78835 |
The Ugly Swans (Russian: Гадкие лебеди) is a science fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. In the USSR, it was published in 1987, in the Latvian magazine Daugava, with the title "The Time of Rains" (Russian: Время дождей). Later it was included as a story within a story in Strugatsky's "", where the protagonist, Felix Sorokin, secretly works on the novel.
Initially, the novel was written in 1966-1967 to be published in the Soviet literary magazine Molodaya Gvardiya, but the publication was rejected by censor due to prominent political and free-thought overtones in the novel. It circulated in samizdat, and in 1972 was published without the authors' permission abroad, in the Federal Republic of Germany.
In 2006, a loose film adaptation of the novel was made by Konstantin Lopushansky.
The action takes place in an uncertain mildly-authoritarian country, in an unnamed town. Famous writer Victor Banev, a middle-aged heavy drinker, comes from the capital city to the town of his childhood where the rain never stops.
Banev finds himself in the middle of strange events linked to slimies or four-eyes - strange leper people suffering from disfiguring "yellow leprosy" manifesting itself as yellow circles around the eyes. These slimies live in a former leper colony. The town's adult population is terrified by their existence, considering them to be the cause of all the bad and odd things in the town. Nevertheless, the town's teenagers simply adore slimies, that including Banev's daughter Irma. A boy named Bol-Kunats, Irma's friend, invites the writer to a meeting with the town school's students. Banev is deeply shocked by teenagers' high intelligence and disullusioned point of view. They appear as superhuman geniuses despising the dirty and corrupt human world and having no pity for the adults.
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Wikipedia