Metro 2033

Twenty years after a nuclear war, humanity stands on the brink of extinction, the world reduced to rubble. Buildings have collapsed, forests burned to ash, and the radiation-dusted surface is overrun by mutated creatures. The last survivors huddle in the platforms and tunnels of the Moscow Metro, forging new factions, towns, and civilizations—even as they struggle to survive, they are locked in endless conflict and slaughter. Humanity has been reduced to beasts, and the final refuge has become a permanent prison. Young Artyom lives at VDNKh Station in the north of the Moscow Metro. He cannot forget his mother, who is gone, and he is devoted to imagining the world before the war: the legends circulating on the platform, postcards and objects from the old days—all windows through which he glimpses that vanished world. As the threat of the mysterious creatures known as the Dark Ones grows ever greater, Artyom accepts a grave mission to seek help from other stations in order to save his home. Carrying a token left by a stranger, he crosses the entire Metro network alone: through the territory of the Hanseatic League, the Red Line’s domain, fascist stations, abandoned platforms, and tunnels where the “dead” roam, until he reaches the legendary Polis, guarded by soldiers and where scholars keep knowledge. Along the way he meets all manner of people and sees the many possibilities of human nature in the wasteland: suspicion, fanaticism, trade, and the remnants of kindness. The “rescue” he pursues gradually points toward a choice about humanity itself. The novel uses a closed underground space to mirror the fragility of civilization, blending post-apocalyptic adventure with political allegory and a probing of human nature. This Chinese edition is translated directly from the Russian by Chen Hengzhe and includes the bonus story “Artyom’s Gospel.”