Saspyga

Karina Shainyan is a writer, author of the novel "With a Key Around the Neck" and other books. If dead horses join the herd as if nothing had happened, and living people are forgotten in the taiga, it means that the saspyga is roaming the Altai Mountains again. There is nothing tastier than its meat. And there is nothing more desirable. Tourist Asya gets separated from the group - she needs to be brought back. Cook Katya finds the fugitive, but is forced to go with her. Katya is worried about the unnaturally obedient horse and is haunted by vague memories of hunting for the saspyga, she wants only one thing - to follow the trail. Will she be able to overcome herself, cope with the past and save Asya from a terrible fate? "Saspyga" is a journey into a world where everything is real: mountains, horses, people and demons. The pain they all experience is also real, and this sincerity, unambiguity and clarity sometimes makes you very scared, sometimes makes you want to cry. Karina wrote an important and beautiful book." (Anna Kozlova)"Shainyan may have invented a new subgenre - "Altai Gothic". In her novel, the fate of a modern city girl is woven into the mythology of the Altai Mountains. Taiga, mountains, horses - and the saspyga, both a mythical and real creature, whose meat can quench all sorrows..." (Yulia Gumen)"There are authors who can write about places and people with precision and love, making them warm, alive, recognizable. There are authors who can tell dizzyingly exciting stories. Those who can do both are few and far between. Karina Shainyan's novel is at once a grippingly creepy horror story, a tense psychological drama, and an inspired hymn to the Altai land." (Galina Yuzefovich)