‘Moskovich is the master of silky, slinky sentences that run in unexpected directions’ The Telegraph
‘Sexy and readable . . . a celebration of resilience and of myriad survivors’ Times Literary Supplement
‘One of the best fiction releases of 2023’ Dazed Digital
A queer anthem for doomed youth by the author of Virtuoso and A Door Behind a Door
On the longest night of a Berlin winter two women sit side-by-side. Both fled the Soviet Union as children, one from Ukraine, and her girlfriend from Russia.
A thigh shifts, fingers fold in, a shoulder is lowered. Neither speak.
As silence weighs heavy between them, decades of Ukrainian and Russian history resurface, from Yiddish jokes, Kyiv’s DIY queer parties and the hidden messages in Russian pop music, to resistance in Odessa, raids in Moscow clubs and the death of their friend.
As the requiem inside the narrator’s head expands within the darkness of the room, she asks the all-important question: what does it mean to have hope?
‘Nadezhda in the Dark is a marvel – a spellbinding work’ LAUREN ELKIN
‘Yelena Moskovich is a true original, a literary titan, an innovator’ JENNI FAGAN
‘
Sexy and readable […] This is a story of one night, but you could equally describe it as a 182-page love letter; a celebration of resilience and of myriad survivors; a troubling history of LGBTQ+ communities in Eastern Europe; and a lament for lost homelands, and all the other losses that ensue […] If you love the Beats, you may find yourself loving Yelena Moskovich’s night in Berlin even more
‘ – Times Literary Supplement
‘Moskovich is the master of silky, slinky sentences that run in unexpected directions . . . Fact and fiction intermingle, as storytelling becomes a means of making it through the night, and a way of processing a tumultuous history’ – The Telegraph
‘Yelena Moskovich’s new novel Nadezhda in the Dark might just be one of the best fiction releases of 2023‘ – Dazed Digital
‘Nadezhda in the Dark is a marvel – a spellbinding work of essayistic, poetic prose, urgent, never not surprising. Yelena Moskovich reminds us that the best novels are adventures of language and form, and acts of bearing witness to the fates of the tender body in the world’ – Lauren Elkin
‘Yelena Moskovich is a true original, a literary titan, an innovator, her prose is both poetry and punk, political without any obviousness to it, pure, demented in the best possible way, and always brilliant. She is one of my favourite living writers‘ – Jenni Fagan
‘Cosmic and intimate, reading Nadezhda in the Dark is like tumbling through jewelled galaxies of words. There is tender grief and love in the negative space between its dazzling stars; and rays of turbulent history refracted through a turbulent mind and body. Easily one of the greatest writers to ever dance on our scorched, collapsing plane of reality‘ – Tom Benn, award-winning author of OXBLOOD
‘Yelena Moskovich writes the page on fire. Meandering, marauding, tender, lacerating, and entirely alive. All of life is here, and Yelena Moskovich does it like no other’ – Rosa Rankin-Gee, author of DREAMLAND
‘Nadezhda in the Dark is a stunning read. It is beautiful and important and made me laugh and cry. If you read one book this year, it must be this one‘ – Camilla Grudova, author of CHILDREN OF PARADISE
‘A dazzling moonlit and deeply shadowed book, Nadezhda in the Dark draws out personal landscapes in the hopeless, war-wreckage of the now, the self against and within the unreachable and contradictory past. In its lovers, sitting in stillness together, it threads twin veins of queer love and queer angst. A novel that sings low and sinks teeth – is there anyone out there who is doing it like Yelena Moskovich right now?‘ – Helen McClory, author of BITTERHALL and THE GOLDBLUM VARIATIONS
‘Nadezhda in the Dark is a poem of a novel, a threnody of a paean, everything it takes to be human genrefucked and writhing on the page. Lyrical and lawless, Yelena Moskovich dares you to keep picking at the ingrown hair of love and see what erupts. ‘I don’t know any culture / that mixes party time with despair / as well as the Slavs’ and I don’t know any book like this, I have to quote it to define it, and you’ll have to read it to understand’ – Sonya Vamtosky
‘Moskovich writes sentences that lilt and slink, her plots developing as a slow seduction and then clouding like a smoke-filled room’ – Guardian
‘Moskovich’s prose radiates with heat‘ – Financial Times
‘We don’t often see writing like this: genuinely subversive and innovative‘ – Guardian
‘Prose that reads as heady yet ephemeral as smoke‘ – Independent
YELENA MOSKOVICH is the author of three novels, Virtuoso, The Natashas (both Serpent’s Tail) and A Door Behind A Door (Influx Press) which was long-listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize. She emigrated to the US with her family as Jewish refugees in 1991, then again on her own to Paris in 2007.
