Metro 2033 [Paperback]

Dmitry Glukhovsky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 18, 2010

The year is 2033. The world has been reduced to rubble. Humanity is nearly extinct. The half-destroyed cities have become uninhabitable through radiation. Beyond their boundaries, they say, lie endless burned-out deserts and the remains of splintered forests. Survivors still remember the past greatness of humankind. But the last remains of civilisation have already become a distant memory, the stuff of myth and legend. More than 20 years have passed since the last plane took off from the earth. Rusted railways lead into emptiness. The ether is void and the airwaves echo to a soulless howling where previously the frequencies were full of news from Tokyo, New York, Buenos Aires. Man has handed over stewardship of the earth to new life-forms. Mutated by radiation, they are better adapted to the new world. Man's time is over. A few score thousand survivors live on, not knowing whether they are the only ones left on earth. They live in the Moscow Metro - the biggest air-raid shelter ever built. It is humanity's last refuge. Stations have become mini-statelets, their people uniting around ideas, religions, water-filters - or the simple need to repulse an enemy incursion. It is a world without a tomorrow, with no room for dreams, plans, hopes. Feelings have given way to instinct - the most important of which is survival. Survival at any price. VDNKh is the northernmost inhabited station on its line. It was one of the Metro's best stations and still remains secure. But now a new and terrible threat has appeared. Artyom, a young man living in VDNKh, is given the task of penetrating to the heart of the Metro, to the legendary Polis, to alert everyone to the awful danger and to get help. He holds the future of his native station in his hands, the whole Metro - and maybe the whole of humanity.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dmitry Glukhovsky is a Journalism and Foreign Relations graduate of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He won the Encouragement Award of the European Science Fiction Society in 2007. In addition to his native Russian, he speaks English, French, German, Hebrew and Spanish.

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Gollancz (March 18, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0575086246
• ISBN-13: 978-0575086241
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.3 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #444,385 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Roughly handled and strange, May 7, 2010

By 

Michael Clarkson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Metro 2033 (Paperback)

I suspect that many people will come to this book via the recently-released game. The novel contains a great deal less violence overall than 4A's shooter, and there is very little of the tense and desperate combat that marks the game's best moments. In exchange, the story of the novel is much more terrible and makes more sense. The majority of the people in the Metro of the book are so small, so petty, and so evil that one almost wishes that Artyom would tear through them with a machine gun as he can in the game. The virtue of his mission fades more with every passing station, and with every pointless death. This definitely isn't an uplifting exploration of man's potential for good.

Glukhovsky's world feels rather weak initially. There is a parade of unsurprising villains -- callous businessman, suspicious communists, cruel fascists, entitled thugs -- and a tour of different philosophies governing the Metro's people that, due to the pressure of Artyom's quest, never gets more than skin-deep. At times the intense fracturing of the world got to be a bit much to swallow. The degradation of learning, in particular the absurd superstitions of the Brahmins in Polis, felt like too much of a descent in too little time. Yet Glukhovsky is at his best when the people get their weirdest -- the twisted luddites of the Great Worm cult were more interesting than most of the other antagonists, and in a certain way they were more believable than many, too. The atmosphere of desperation and the oppressive ruin of the world are compellingly conveyed, however, and in general the story is solid and colorful.

The translation by Natasha Randall is fairly robust but would have benefited from some additional editing.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exhilarating and paranormal experience, April 30, 2010

By 

J. Rodriguez (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Metro 2033 (Paperback)

The book was the foundation of the recently released video game Metro 2033, and it's highly accurate of how the game depicts the book. Metro 2033 makes you really wonder how life would be in a metro station that was built for survival, but in the end it separates the people to their beginning stages of ideologies. Dmitry is such an excellent writer that makes you really think about the underworld of the metro, and I praise the imagery and descriptive writing style he has, from the smallest parts as in Hunter's facial features, to the largest parts as in the nuclear winter of Moscow itself. This has been the best book I have read in the science fiction genre, and I will reread it to the extent. I received one of the few copies to be sold in America from amazon's paperback copies, which were sold out in a few hours, and I find myself lucky to have received it. I also have read the intro to my classmates, and they themselves have wanted to take the book from me! Although I HIGHLY RECOMMEND PLAYING THE GAME BEFORE BUYING AND READING THE BOOK!!!!! I am highly anticipated for the Metro 2034 release, and hopefully the next sequel game for Metro 2033. Oh, and the Hollywood movie for Metro 2033. Get this book for a friend of yours that appeals to science fiction, they will thank you. Trust me.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Laughably bad translation, September 14, 2010

By 

J. Courtney (Germany) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Metro 2033 (Paperback)

Though the story itself is quite enjoyable it's the laughably bad translation that makes this very difficult to read. It's quite a lot like reading something directly from google translate - how did this english version get published?

Sentence structure is a disgrace, for example: "And the Protagonist went to his tent and took off his shoes and then he fell asleep and had a dream." Does and really need to be used so often?

Please re translate this, it's a complete disgrace.