“A Moscow writer who has been in exile since March 2022 releases the novel “Mouse,” a zombie apocalypse story in which the master of the Kremlin dies in the course of an epidemic. For the author, this epidemic is a metaphor for Russian state propaganda and its consequences.

Leaving Russia on March 3, 2022, a few days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ivan Filippov began writing his fantasy novel in the summer of that year in Tbilisi, where he found his first refuge with his family. Now he lives in Berlin, which he is sincerely happy about. Born and raised in Moscow, a graduate of the Faculty of History at Moscow State University, the 42-year-old writer with an intelligent appearance and glasses remains deeply attached to his hometown...

In August 2024, the novel was banned in Russia ...

“This book became psychotherapy for me. The war changed my compatriots. Each of us has experienced situations when, in conversations with relatives or friends, we realize: no arguments work, critical thinking gives way to religious faith. Propaganda is like a deadly epidemic,” Filippov explains.

...Ordinary people - both good and bad, rich and poor - are dying by the millions. “It was important for me to show that destruction affects all strata of society,” Filippov explains.

Although the novel is set in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is based on a fictional virus. However, the novel's imagery references real elements of Russian reality. The laboratory developing an immortality elixir for Putin has a prototype described in Meduza's investigations. The fate of the scientist surrounded by zombies in a prison van echoes the cases of real-life defendants accused of treason. Even the pink mouse on the cover of the book comes from Moscow's Arbat.

Ivan Filippov jokes that he himself dies three times in the novel: he is the father of two teenagers struggling to survive (the prototypes are his own sons), a man in a T-shirt with a capybara in the subway, and the owner of a dog with an address on its collar. These realistic details give the novel a humanity: not all the infected in The Mouse are villains.

“The division into “remaining” and “left” Russians is artificial. I admire those who stayed and are fighting against the war. I make no distinction between us,” the writer emphasizes.

The subject of propaganda has long preoccupied Filippov. A former journalist, he later worked as an assistant scriptwriter for producer Alexander Rodnyansky, who was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison in Russia in 2024 for criticizing the war in Ukraine. Filippov himself was put on the list of “foreign agents” in April 2024 for running the Telegram channel “On the Western Front Without Change,” dedicated to analyzing so-called Z-channels - propaganda resources about the war.

“It is interesting to study these channels: here propaganda comes from 'below', for people who no longer watch TV,” Filippov explains. Now, for example, their authors rejoice at the liberation of Suja (a town in the Kursk region taken by Ukrainian troops in August 2024), but at the same time they fear peace talks: they fear that Russia will not be able to secure territorial seizures “by right of force,” but only with Trump's authorization.

The novel Mouse, which was refused publication by eight major Russian publishers because of Putin's death scene, was published in 2023 by the émigré publishing house Freedom Letters. It has now been translated into French, Estonian and Czech. And although the book was soon banned in Russia, it was read by many - proof that even the most dangerous propaganda virus is not omnipotent.”

Ivan Filippov

Le Monde