The Disappearing Act

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.