The Disappearing Act
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The Disappearing Act
A haunting novel on identity, exile and the fragile desire to disappear by Maria Stepanova, one of Russia's greatest living writers.ย
The writer known as M. is living in exile while her home country wages war on a neighbouring state. Wracked by shame and severed from her language, M. finds herself unable to write, unmoored in a present where the future feels unknowable.
When she travels to a nearby country for an event, a twist of fate leaves her stranded in an unfamiliar city, phoneless and untraceable. In this rupture, she feels a flicker of liberationโthe possibility of starting overโbut 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. For a moment, reinvention seems within reach. Oscillating between reality and dream, written in rich, hypnotic prose, The Disappearing Act is a haunting meditation on identity, language, and the fragile desire to disappear by Maria Stepanova, one of Russia's greatest living writers.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781804272329
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 26 February 2026
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Fitzcarraldo Editions
Contributors:
- Translated by Sasha Dugdale
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 125.0mm
Height: 197.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 136
About the Author
Maria Stepanova is a poet, essayist, journalist and the author of ten poetry collections and three books of essays. In Memory of Memory won Russia's Bolshaya Kniga Award in 2018. Sasha Dugdale's English translation was awarded the Berman Literature Prize and was also shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and the James Tait Black Prize for Biography. She founded and was editor-in-chief of the online independent crowd-sourced journal Colta.ru. As a prominent critic of Putin's regime, she had to leave Russia and is now living in exile.
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