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?
