The Disappearing Act - Maria Stepanova

Reserve your copy now! Expected release is March 3, 2026. Will ship on or after March 3, 2026. Limited copies available. 

From the renowned Russian author of In Memory of Memory comes a haunting meditation on identity, exile, language, art, and the fragile desire to disappear.

The writer M has been living in exile in the city of B since her homeland declared war on a neighbouring state. Wracked by shame and despair, and severed from her language, M finds herself unable to write, unmoored in a present where the future feels unknowable. When she is invited to give a reading at a literary festival in a nearby country, a strange turn of events occurs. After a series of missed connections and mishaps during her trip, including losing her phone, she finds herself stranded and untraceable in an unfamiliar coastal town.

Cut off from everyone she knows, M feels a sense of freedom and the possibility of starting over, but memories of childhood, books, films, and tarot cards pull her back, the last fragments of a vanishing world. Then she meets a troupe of circus performers who invite her to join them, and reinvention feels within reach. 

In this brief interlude, it seems as if M may finally escape from herself, her past, and her nationality. Written in rich and hypnotic prose, The Disappearing Act oscillates between reality and dream, between an oppressive present and a lost past, between life and literature.

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Maria Mikhailovna Stepanova is a Russian poet, novelist, and journalist. She is the current editor of Colta.ru, an online publication specializing in arts and culture. In 2005, she won the prestigious Andrei Bely Prize for poetry.