Vladimir Sorokin’s latest novel is being demanded to be withdrawn from sale

A photo of a letter is being circulated on social networks, which is allegedly being sent to bookstores by the Moscow publishing house AST. It contains a demand to stop selling the latest novel by writer Vladimir Sorokin, “Heritage,” both in paper and electronic form. The reasons for the requirement are not specified.

The first, apparently, is a letter published Telegram channel “Words and Money”, which is run by publisher Vladimir Kharitonov. It was reposted on Facebook by the former editor-in-chief of Ekho Moskvy, Alexey Venediktov.

By information publication of Sota, the withdrawal of Sorokin’s book from sale may be sought by the Nespi movement (People’s United Union of Information Consumers), created by pro-Kremlin activists Ekaterina Shugaeva and Olga Uskova. They see signs of pornography and pedophilia in the novel “Heritage”. According to them, they are also seeking to initiate criminal proceedings against the writer.

There has already been a collective complaint against Heritage submitted to the Investigative Committee of Russia in January. Then the AST publishing house, which published the novel, promised to conduct an examination of it. Sorokin himself stated that there is no pornography, no pedophilia, no “LGBT propaganda” in his novel, since all the characters are adults, the hard scenes reflect the cruelty of the world, and the novel itself belongs to the fantasy genre. “We live in a world that is much harsher than the cruelest literature. For many decades, describing scenes of violence, I ask the same question: why can’t people do without it? I have no other goals. If this question does not arise in readers, then , they read my novels superficially,” noted Sorokin.

However, in January it was reported that Heritage had disappeared from searches at a number of online retailers, including Labyrinth, Wildberries and Read City.

• Last December, the AST publishing house removed books by writers Boris Akunin and Dmitry Bykov from sale. A statement on behalf of the general director of the publishing house, Pavel Grishkov, said that certain “public statements of writers” “caused a wide public outcry” and “required a legal assessment.” Akunin and Bykov have repeatedly spoken out against the war in Ukraine and the Kremlin’s repressive policies in Russia. Both of them are included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of so-called foreign agents, Boris Akunin (Grigory Chkhartishvili) is also included in the list of “terrorists and extremists”.