Metro 2035

Dmitry Glukhovsky’s 2015 novel *Metro 2035* concludes his original trilogy of post-apocalyptic science fiction, following *Metro 2033* and *Metro 2034*. The story takes place in the Moscow Metro and the ruins of the city above after a nuclear war. Its protagonist, Artyom, returns from the first book and tries to reach other survivors beyond Moscow. The game *Metro: Last Light* partly inspired the novel, and the game *Metro Exodus* was loosely based on it.

Roughly 20 years after the nuclear war, Artyom has left the Spartan Order and lives with his wife Anya at VDNKh station. He broadcasts radio messages from the irradiated surface, claiming he once heard a signal from Ostankino Tower, but receives no replies. Anya sees his efforts as pointless, and their marriage suffers because he refuses to have children. Homer, a character from *Metro 2034*, arrives to write a book about his own experiences during the events of *Metro 2034*. Artyom initially refuses to help, but changes his mind when Homer says he met a man at Teatralnaya who made radio contact with a city called Polar Dawns on the Kola Peninsula.

Artyom and Homer head for Teatralnaya. A scavenger and trader named Lyokha helps them cross the border of Hansa, a capitalist faction controlling the Koltsevaya line. After visiting a brothel in Tsvetnoy Bulvar, they reach Tverskaya—renamed “Darwin” by the neo-Nazi Fourth Reich—and are arrested. A Reich officer threatens to kill Homer unless Artyom bombs the passage from neutral Teatralnaya to Okhotny Ryad, held by the communist Red Line. Artyom finds the radio operator at Teatralnaya, but Red Line soldiers take him to Okhotny Ryad and execute him before Artyom can speak to him. Prisoners tell Artyom that outsiders have allegedly visited the Metro. Using the Reich’s bomb, he escapes to the surface and has a strange vision of a fantasy Moscow.

Artyom reaches Polis, a union of four stations and the Spartan Order’s headquarters. Miller, the Order’s leader and Anya’s father, sends Artyom and his Spartan friend Letyaga to deliver a message to the Reich’s Führer. When Letyaga tells Reich guards the letter is from someone named “Bessolov,” Artyom is taken to Schiller (formerly Pushkinskaya) and forced into labor with other captives, including Homer and Lyokha.