“Get to Aralsk and you’ll really see something.”

“Where’s Aralsk?” Dima asks. 

“It’s on the sea. Well, not the sea. There are fishing boats and loads of salt but no sea. Not any more. Now the sea’s gone it’s windy and freezing and hot as hell… It’s like the world long after it should have ended.”

______

On a spring morning in 1993 Sasha’s partner, Anya, inexplicably exits.

Sasha presumes infidelity and flees north with his son, driving a stolen car, nursing a stolen dream.

By the time Anya realises she’s being trafficked, her only hope is the man who thinks she betrayed him.

A road-trip across the detritus of the post-Soviet steppe, Aralsk is a story about family, the brewing of tea, abandoned ships, and how sometimes the only way forward is back.