I don’t know what this novel means, in a Russian context, but it certainly was evocative of traveling in a blizzard. Dr. Platon Ilich Garin has to hitch ride north with cart-driver Crouper and his team of 50 tiny horses, to get a vaccine to a town stricken with “Bolivian blackness” before the zombie-making epidemic spreads. The two race through a blizzard, battling the elements and various other weird experiences. Spoiler alert: despite the book’s description, there are no zombies, but there are mini-horses, giants, and hallucinating-inducing glass pyramids.