A marvellous, subtle, funny book - Sunday Times

A fantastic vision of extraordinary power, a difficult, demanding but rewarding work - The Times Literary Supplement

The Snail on the Slope may be the most dizzyingly concentrated dose of the Strugatskys’ strange and powerful medicine

[Arkady and Boris Strugatsky] open windows in the mind and then fail to close them at all, so that, putting down one of their books, you feel a cold breeze still lifting the hairs on the back of your neck - New York Times

Approached as a meditation on the human inability to comprehend more than a very small part of the universe, this is a surprisingly satisfying, if often perplexing, work - Publisher’s Weekly

Arkady Strugatsky (1925-1991) and Boris Strugatsky (1931-2012)

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky began to collaborate in the early 1950s after Arkady had studied English and Japanese and worked as a technical translator and editor, and Boris was a computer mathematician at Pulkova astronomical observatory. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes them as ‘the best Soviet SF writers’ and works such as Hard to be a God, Definitely Maybe, The Snail on the Slope and Monday Begins on Saturday are powerful and poignant novels that continue to amaze and move readers. Andrei Tarkovsky’s much admired film, Stalker, was based on their most famous work, Roadside Picnic.