The Telenkovian Experiment

A secret buried in the snows of Soviet Ukraine may unravel the soul of modern science-and humanity itself.

When Harvard biochemist Dr. L. Geoffrey Weinburg is summoned to a remote Soviet research facility in the waning days of the USSR, he expects an academic curiosity-a quick evaluation of a supposed psychiatric outbreak. Instead, he finds himself at the edge of a dark and disturbing truth that links an old Ukrainian man's haunting memories to a global epidemic.

As the tale unfolds through a series of chilling, firsthand "reels" of memory, we are transported to the famine-ridden village of Telenkov in the 1930s. There, a brutal winter and even harsher regime push its inhabitants beyond the boundaries of morality, sanity, and survival. Cannibalism, madness, and spiritual reckoning collide with a chilling conspiracy that reaches into the future Geoff thought he understood.

Blending razor-sharp satire with searing psychological depth, The Telenkovian Experiment is a provocative, unflinching exploration of the cost of scientific ambition and the dark intersections of trauma, politics, and identity. M. J. Politis crafts a genre-defying novel that oscillates between historical horror, speculative science, and haunting allegory. At its heart, it is a meditation on how the past refuses to die-and how the line between healer and experimenter is thinner than we dare imagine.

For readers drawn to The Manchurian Candidate, The Road, or Sophie's Choice, this novel probes the moral fractures of the 20th century with a scalpel and a storyteller's eye. The question is not what happened in Telenkov-but what it means for all of us now.