Hamid Ismailov was born into a deeply religious Uzbek family of Mullahs and Khodjas living in Kyrgyzstan, many of whom had lost their lives during the Stalin era persecution. Yet he received an exemplary Soviet education, and eventually became a dissident writer and poet residing in the West. Russian Matryoshka will be (approximately) his tenth novel to be published in English.
When Clea returns to London with her new Russian husband, she is surprised to see him become even more eccentric.
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.
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
