Alla Nesterova’s myth works defy simplistic description, therefore it’s best to describe them with these lines from one of her own poems in “My Mythology” cycle:
“…there is an armchair and the soul is carried over
to where all steps fade in the captive town
and it is followed by the water of the others
that alters all their features from without” *
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*Translated from Russian by Dmitri Manin
Alla Nesterova’s works in EWLF are reprinted, with the artist’s permission, from Alla Nesterova. Greek Mythology (Алла Нестерова. Греческая мифология).
Alla Nesterova was born in Orenburg. She studied violin at the college of the Moscow State Conservatory and graduated from the Yekaterinburg State Conservatory. She worked on her Greek mythology graphics for 20 years. She now has 140 sheets of cardboard with 140 different mythological themes. Her collections of poems and books with her graphics were published in Berlin.
When Clea returns to London with her new Russian husband, she is surprised to see him become even more eccentric.
A haunting dystopia some readers have called “the new 1984.” In a society where memory is rewritten and resistance is pre-approved, freedom isn’t restricted; it’s redefined. As systems evolve beyond human control and choice becomes a simulation, true defiance means refusing the script, even when the system already knows you will.
“13 short pieces…pungently convey the effects of growing up under a totalitarian regime.” .—Publishers Weekly
Original poetry by Nina Kossman, accompanied by a selection of poems by Marina Tsvetaeva, translated from Russian by Kossman. “The sea is a postcard,” writes Nina Kossman. There is both something elemental in this vision and—iron-tough.”
—Ilya Kaminsky
