Nadezhda in the Dark - by Yelena Moskovitch (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A stunning, novel-in-verse exploration of LGBTQ+ life in the shadow of the former Soviet bloc

On the longest night of a milk-dark Berlin winter, a doomed couple sit side by side on their bed. Both fled the Soviet Union as children, the narrator from Ukraine, and her girlfriend from Russia.

The lights are off. Neither speak.

In their silence, a century of Ukrainian and Russian history resurfaces: forgotten literary characters, Yiddish maxims, contraband jokes, LGBT life in the post-Soviet bloc, Jewish diaspora to Israel, beauty vlogs, shaken sanity, hidden messages in Russian pop music, resistance in Odessa, Moscow club raids, and the death of a beloved friend.

The requiem inside the narrator's head circles the question pinned within the darkness: What does it mean to hold onto Nadezhda, whose name means "hope"? And is holding it enough?

Review Quotes

"Elegant and erudite, Nadezhda in the Dark is a remarkable tapestry of longing, humor and hope that spans across time and borders. Unlike anything I've read on the complexities of post-Soviet identity."

-Sasha Vasilyuk, author of Sami Rohr Prize winner Your Presence Is Mandatory

"Yelena Moskovich writes like Anne Carson walks into a bar, asks Marguerite Duras for her number and Freud for his couch. A Ukrainian in America, an American in Paris, and never quite still - except when writing. Nadezhda in the Dark is a novel of such static movement: exile and ennui, rhythm and fracture, broken tongues that French kiss."

-Alice Pfeiffer, journalist and author of Le Goût du Moche and Je Ne Suis Pas Parisienne

"This book felt like staying up all night talking with somebody I just met but who could somehow see inside of me. It gave voice to the particular thrum of immigrant longing that I feel under everything but have trouble putting into words. The shrapnel from being a former soviet. A meditation on the three untranslatable words--sudba, dusha, toska."

-Katya Apekina, author of Mother Doll and The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish

"Moskovich is a sorcerer. I'm obsessed, fascinated by the magic she weaves with her words. Nadezhda in the Dark, a story of the worlds within a moment; the humanity, the terror, the history, the life that exists in the space between two people. Moskovich's writing is the labyrinth I want to get lost in."

-Jethro Massey, filmmaker, Paul & Paulette Take a Bath

"Visceral, numinous, virtuosic, Moskovich's Nadezhda in the Dark explores intimacy, exile and the intricacy, ecstasy and fallout of falling in love. Two young women's stories and histories merge and diverge, collide and cross over in a novel of deeply lyrical free verse whose subjects range from identity to war to family to longing for and belonging to a culture and country--or not. The speaker says, 'You need darkness / to be loved' and we also need the illuminate light of this book. In haunting, luminous language that is as seamless as it is sinuous, Nadezhda in the Dark is a literary event not be missed."

-Heather Hartley, Former Paris Editor for Tin House Magazine, author of Adult Swim and Knock Knock