Please note that this event is not suitable for our English speaking only audiences, as no translation from Russian will be provided on this occasion. As part of our efforts to cater for our varied audiences and bring in a diversity of voices, some of our events now take an intimate chamber format and are conducted in Russian only.

In her recent novel, The Auction (Аукцион), author Yana Moskalenko imagines a post-catastrophic society divided between a prosperous City and the Suburbs beyond the Wall. In this world, even the soul has become a commodity – cultivated, traded, and sold through a powerful institution known as the Bank of Souls, with access granted only at the Auction.

The novel serves as a starting point for a wider discussion about the shifting landscape of contemporary prose. In conversation with Elena Timokhina, Yana will explore how modern literature increasingly blurs the boundaries between “serious” fiction and genre forms such as dystopia, fantasy and the thriller. Why are speculative settings becoming one of the most compelling spaces for addressing themes traditionally associated with “high” literature – violence, identity, power and social structures?

When a fictional world is fantastical, but its conflicts feel deeply realistic, what function does the speculative element perform? Is it metaphor, allegory, or a modern form of Aesopian language? The discussion will also examine the principles of “soft” worldbuilding – the creation of a hermetic, internally coherent space where credibility and emotional truth matter more than excessive detail – and why today’s readers are less interested in technical exposition than in conceptual and moral depth.

As speculative fiction experiences a powerful resurgence, long dismissed as secondary to literary realism, The Auction invites us to reconsider the genre as a site of serious intellectual and artistic experimentation.

Yana Moskalenko, writer, screenwriter, and researcher of Russian émigré memoirs (PhD, University College London), holds a Master's degree in Creative Writing from the Higher School of Economics and a Master's degree in Comparative Literature, Art, and Philosophy from the Pompeu Fabra University. She is a lecturer in creative writing at UCL.

Elena Timokhina is a writer, a columnist for Setters.Media, the Mel.fm portal, and the magazine Rules of Life, and the founder of the production centre for the promotion of contemporary literature, 'Open Call'. She is a graduate of Royal Holloway, University of London and is an ambassador for Russian-language flash fiction.

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