Spin the Bottle

Olga Romanova, a renowned human rights activist and journalist, suddenly wrote a thrilling neo-noir. A political thriller with elements of a bloodbath, a coming-of-age drama mixed with slash fanfiction. It would be a typical yaoi (boys’ love) if she had limited herself to just men, but no.

The characters are easily recognizable; every day you see their prototypes on the screens of your smartphones or computers, even if you don't want to see them at all. The action begins in 1974 in the suburbs of Leningrad, moves to Moscow, Kabul, Berlin, Dresden, Petersburg, and ends in a not-so-distant future.

All this could have been. Or maybe it really was.

A cheerful young woman from a Ukrainian village arrives at the beginning of the stagnation era to conquer the Northern capital. She tries to help people, she is smart, she has a knack, she makes a dizzying career, intersecting with the main Soviet woman-cosmonaut, an aspiring KGB officer sent to Dresden, with gangsters, with members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, with ministers, spies, and hired killers. Without hostility to anyone, without breaking the rules, by the end of her life she transforms into a monster who declared war on her homeland.