2030. While studying the statistics of a recent wave of murder–suicides and self-destruction, big data

analyst Kevin Mead discovers that the spread patterns of these incidents resemble the progression

of a pandemic. However, he never manages to fully understand the nature of the disease later named

after him, before falling victim to the virus himself in a horrendous suicide.

Among the novel’s versatile cast are Thierry and Sonia, a young couple spending their second honeymoon on Pleasure Island, a hidden tropical paradise; Michelle, the glamorous owner of a Paris marketing agency who once had a bittersweet love affair with Thierry, along with her teenage son Quentin and her non-binary lover Vic; Sonia’s parents, Russian-Jewish immigrants who built a successful business in the US; Mirabel, a flight attendant battling alcoholism and nymphomania;

Charlie Kumamoto, a Japanese-American marine stationed on the far side of Pleasure Island; and

survivors of the Yugoslav wars, still struggling to forget their past and heal wounds already passed down to their children. All of them, in one way or another, will encounter Mead’s disease as the epidemic spreads swiftly across the world.

Its first stage resembles the flu, the second — a transcendental trip, and in the third, immense guilt

builds within the afflicted individual, until it becomes unbearable. This guilt may be directed at parents, children, spouses, lovers, the underprivileged, ravaged nature, and victims of wars and violent outbreaks. The feeling of unbearable guilt pushes the afflicted person to the edge, where suicide seems the only way out.

However, not everyone succumbs to the disease. Some possess innate immunity; for others, the disease takes a mild form, and some are saved by the arrival of a vaccine. But how safe is the vaccine itself? By safeguarding people from the sense of guilt, wouldn’t the vaccine kill conscience itself? The questions are many, and now groups of religious extremists storm the medical lab building...

Sergey Kuznetsov drew inspiration from books like A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James,

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, and, above all, Infinite Jest. The common denominator is the authors’ intent to confront the reader with the unbearable: depression, pain, suffering, and violence. Meat Grinder adds guilt and the torment of conscience to the mix.

Conceived as a reflection on the pandemic, Meat Grinder was nearly complete when the war in Ukraine began in February 2022. Its themes shifted from violence to guilt and PTSD, made even more relevant by the war, though the novel is set in an alternate future where it never occurred.

In Meat Grinder, Sergey Kuznetsov stays true to his signature writing approach: the novel is a gaudy

yet finely interlaced patchwork of life stories. Each individual voice is surgically pitched and masterfully directed into a powerful symphony on modern-time ambiguities and fears. This is a brutal, frightening, and relentless book, but through the darkness, a faint glimmer of hope still flickers.