After a century of brooding and talking telepathically to his Mausoleum janitor from his glass coffin, Vladimir Lenin awakens—alive and bewildered in the modern world.

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.

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