Metro 2034
Metro 2034 is a dystopian novel by Russian author Dmitri Gluchowski from 2009 and an indirect successor to the novel Metro 2033 . As in the previous novel, the action takes place in a future Moscow, the aboveground part of which has become uninhabitable after a nuclear war. The few survivors are forced to live in the metro, which has also been partially destroyed.
Gluchowski turned the book into an art project and asked the well-known Russian electronic performer Dolphin to write an original soundtrack (OST for short) for the novel. Meanwhile, Anton Gretchko was working on a gallery of oil paintings.
action
The plot continues a year after the events of Metro 2033 . The Sevastopolskaya station, one of the largest electricity suppliers for the ring line, has to struggle to defend itself due to recurring monster attacks. When one day the weekly caravan to Serpukhovskaya does not return and the telephone line to the Hansa goes down, the alert rises. The station master Vladimir Ivanovich Istomin decides to send three soldiers out to investigate the disappearance of the heavily guarded caravan. After these have still not returned after three days, the mood in the station changes.
Brigadier Hunter wants to get to the bottom of the matter. Hunter had been believed dead two months earlier, as a taciturn and strong fighter to defend the station. To this end, he takes with him the old soldier Nikolai Ivanovich, known by everyone as Homer, who worked as a route keeper in the Moscow subway before the nuclear war and knows the tunnels. Despite a call from the Tulskaya station, a station in front of the Serpukhovskaya, in which the leader of the no longer returned search party warns of a storm, the military commander, Colonel Denis Michailowitsch, prepares a storm, but Istomin orders Hunter to be given at least two days .
The three of Hunter, Homer and the young soldier Akhmed set out for Serpukhovskaya. In the first station, Nachimowski Prospekt, they encounter so-called corpse-eaters. The white, hairless, and spider-like primates feed exclusively on carrion. Sudden fog arises in the mysterious Nagornaya station, and Hunter is involved in a skirmish with a creature that cannot be seen by his companions. Both escape from the station, but get back disoriented via a tunnel turn: The desperate Achmed now decides to sacrifice himself to the station, Homer panics and first has to be knocked down by Hunter so that he can save him from the station.
At the Tulskaja, Hunter had a conversation with the apparently still living fighters of the caravan, but they then cordoned off the station. In Homer there is growing suspicion of the increasingly uncontrolled and increasingly brutal Hunter, who calls for the storm back on Sevastopolskaya and wants to organize a flamethrower at the polis via a risky detour with Homer's support. On the way they meet young Sascha, who lived with her father, a former military commander, in exile between the stations until he dies from the radiation that he had to endure as a stalker in order to ensure her survival. Sascha travels with the two men to the Hanseatic League, as she feels called to rescue the unpredictable and meanwhile murderous Hunter. Homer has meanwhile been able to solve the riddle himself using the caravan's radio operator's diaries: a deadly virus has infected the men, Hunter wants to wipe out this danger for the entire metro.
Hunter is wounded after a fight on the Pawelezkaja with its defenders against two huge white big cats, but the three finally reach the heart of the grateful Hanseatic League through Hunter's efforts. At the bedside he harshly corrects Sascha, who is trying to get through to him, and provokes her to leave the ward over the surface. After being rescued by a stalker, Homer finds her back in the station and travels to Hunter with her and the young and fascinating musician Leonid, who has apparently had an eye on Sascha. However, Sascha separates from Homer when Leonid reveals himself to be a member of the “Emerald City”, a secret place of culture and knowledge under the former university, according to legends, and offers a cure. Homer finds Hunter arrested in the polis and asks him to alert his superior Melnik before his dark insides get the upper hand. From this, Hunter is assured of support due to his trust, although insanity and madness have already gained the upper hand in him, he has killed his guards for practically no reason.
Meanwhile, through Leonid, Sascha arrives at the area of the red line in a sometimes strange way. There, however, he has to admit that he made this trip mainly because of his origins: He is the son of Secretary General Moskvin, but has been rejected because of his dreamy artistic ideals, the emerald city is as much a legend for him as it is for Sascha. However, due to the former appearance in the red line, he knows the remedy: radiation. In an adventurous way they arrive in time for Hunter's attack on the Serpukhovskaya, on which fighters of the polis have to keep infected people in check, whereby the situation escalates at this point in time due to their revolt. Hunter is ready to mercilessly sacrifice several stations to save the metro from the terrible effects of an epidemic. The escaping crowd captivates Leonid with his fascinating flute playing, but Sascha can no longer stop Hunter, shortly afterwards Leonid falls through bullets of the attackers. Suddenly, however, the station is flooded, Sascha disappears in the floods. Hunter tries desperately to save them, but fails through the closing bulkheads.
In the epilogue one learns of the deaths of hundreds on Serpukhovskaya, but the rest of the infected were saved and healed. Homer is back on Sevastopolskaya, next to him Hunter begins shakily to sing Leonid's tune.
background
The main character of the story is old Homer, who got this name because of his preoccupation with old newspaper articles and stories of the Metro. He also regards the journey with Hunter as an adventure and a plot of his “story” that takes place around him, which he wants to leave the metro as a legacy of his life. The focus of this, however, is not himself, but rather Hunter, especially since he himself rarely seems to play a significant role in the plot of the novel.
The Brigadier Hunter is already known from the previous novel Metro 2033 , where he initially disappears after he tries to unravel the mystery of the blacks, here he reappears, but due to the influence of the blacks on the verge of madness, since they seem to be to him have revealed their own actions, in the course of which he initiated the annihilation of the actually benevolent blacks. His claim to uncompromisingly protect the metro against all dangers becomes his curse through this self-knowledge. However, the plot is not directly linked to the previous novel, and it is not completely clear whether one of the soldiers named Artyom on Serpukhovskaya, from whose point of view is reported in short sections towards the end of the novel, is the former protagonist.
expenditure
- Dmitri Alexejewitsch Gluchowski: Metro 2034 , Heyne Verlag , 2009, ISBN 978-3-453-53301-1
- new editions:
- Metro 2034 , Heyne Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-4533-1631-7
- Metro 2033 / Metro 2034 , Heyne Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-4533-1593-8