KHAMAR-DABAN: A Novel

A novel, written on the basis of a real event.

In August 1993 seven hikers from a small club in northern Kazakhstan walked into the Khamar-Daban range above Lake Baikal. Six of them died on a bare plateau in a single day. The seventh was seventeen years old, and she came down from the mountain alone.

In this novel she is Marina Sokolenko. She comes down off the ridge on her own, keeps a river on her left because that is what she was told to do, and days later, on a gravel bar, spreads a blue sleeping bag over a willow bush so that somebody coming down the water will see it.

What follows is not a search. It is arithmetic. Helicopter hours nobody can pay for. A control date entered in ink in a register in another country. A folder with a lace tie. A cupboard sold to help pay for the flying. And a girl asked the same questions three times in five weeks, twice on consecutive days, until the answers match.

A cause of death was written down in 1993. It has been argued about ever since, and the report itself has never been seen. This novel does not offer a solution and was not written to.

Every name, every conversation and every document in these pages is invented. What is on the record is set down at the end of the book.

Miro Nes wrote this novel in Slovak. The English edition was made with the help of AI translation: a human translator was beyond the budget of a first book, and he would rather say that than not.