The ugly swans

The Ugly Swans is set in an unnamed town in an unknown country where it rains perpetually, and where some affliction of unknown cause, a kind of plague perhaps, is afflicting some of the residents. Victor Banev is a writer who returns to the town to deal with his daughter, Irma's, strange

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behaviour, at the demand of his estranged wife. Irma and all the children of the town have become seemingly cold and rational - alien to their parents - and are so under some kind of influence of the plague carriers, or 'slimies' as they are called. The slimies' condition is studied by Golem, the physician, whose leprosarium receives literally truckloads of books to meet the slimies' insatiable demand, and also shelters them from the victimisation they suffer at the hands of the town's population - which only increases as their apparent hold over the town's children grows, in a way reminicent the pied-piper of Hamelin...

This is not the sort of science-fiction in which you will find any discussion of science, or technology - here we have ambiguity, instead of explanation; here we have political and philisophical allusions; and we have well developed characters - Victor is well written and interesting, with greivances and wandering thoughts, and we follow him through his half-inebriated conversations at the hotel bar, as well as near-interrogation by a class of the strange children.
High recommended.

-A note which enhances the book even further and helps explain the ending (don't worry, this shouldn't spoil it) is that the Strugatsky brother were writing in the Soviet Union, and so, because of censorship, had to be creative in expressing hope of overcoming or reaching beyond the state of things as they were.

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