The book is short and reads quickly, with a prologue for some background and four longish chapters set over a twelve-year span in the town of Harmont, which has been partly absorbed by one of the Zones of alien effects and residues. A 'stalker' in this book is a freelance looter of artifacts resulting from the Visit by some inscrutable extraterrestrial power. The 'stalker' protagonist Red isn't really an anti-hero, although he is a criminal without revolutionary aspirations. On the whole, I read the book's philosophy to be one of cosmic indifferentism verging on existentialism. Surprisingly, it was a blinkered escapist editorial aesthetic that interfered with the Strugatskys' work in the publishing environment of 1970s Soviet sf. LeGuin in her 2012 foreword (drawing on a 1977 review) calls the story 'indifferent to ideology' (vi), and it is in fact rather hostile to liberal economics and bourgeois morality. It wasn't Soviet political ideology they ran afoul of. An afterword by Boris Strugatsky provides a partial account of the authors' struggle with publishing authorities. The version I read was the 2012 'new translation' which freed the original Russian text from hostile Soviet publisher's edits. It was clearly an influence on some of my favorite 21st-century sf, notably VanderMeer's Annihilation and Harrison's Nova Swing.

More than 30 years after publication, the success of the genre shows no sign of waning, and the issues raised are equally pertinent across Europe, and beyond.I had encountered enough references to Roadside Picnic for it to have been on my wishlist for years. The rugged, windswept region of Skåne weaves itself inextricably into a novel that not only launched an addictive new crime-fiction sub-genre, but also addressed Sweden’s demons: the rise of the far-right, the vilification of refugees and police antipathy. Mankell peels away Wallander’s layers the decay of his private life starkly contrasting with his dogged determination to solve the crime.

The culprit proves elusive but the pace is electric. Recently and reluctantly separated from his wife and daughter, Kurt Wallander loses himself in whisky and opera, snatching fitful hours of sleep and guilt-ridden fast food while working this perplexing and shocking case: an elderly farmer tortured to death his wife barely alive by his side. When Patti Smith writes: ‘I felt a kinship with this slightly alcoholic, melancholic police detective’ in her introduction, she speaks of Mankell’s skilful crafting of his empathetic protagonist.

Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky