UK & Commonwealth (Fitzcarraldo), Spain (Acantilado), Italy (Adelphi), Netherlands (Bezige Bij), Denmark (Palomar), Sweden (Nirstedt/litteratur), Finland (Siltala), Bulgaria (Janet45)
In her new novel, Maria Stepanova narrows in on this remarkable figure in order to ask probing questions about our relationship to memory, the past, the dead and to our political present. The book is composed of two narrative strands. The first, more conventionally novelistic of these, gives voice to Ann Walker, Lister’s lover and spouse, who speaks from beyond the grave, where knowledge is total, allowing her to connect our present with her own. Stepanova is drawn to the figure of Walker, who is known to history primarily through what Lister wrote of her. But it was with Walker that Lister travelled through Russia and beyond, and who insisted on transporting Lister's corpse back to Halifax in a wooden box, providing a key motif of the novel.
The second strand is essayistic and places Lister’s life within a broader cultural and historical context. In homage to Lister’s obsession with lists, which almost seem to create an index of her entire mind, the essayistic chapters are structured as lists, providing a catalogue for an invisible museum collection expressed in her diaries.
Through this artful interweaving of narrative and essay, Stepanova melds the 19th century with the 21st, revealing rhymes across history.
Persons
Maria Stepanova
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Disappearing Act
UK & Commonwealth (Fitzcarraldo), USA & Canada (New Directions), Spanish world rights (Acantilado), Spanish audiobook (Audible), Catalan (Angle), Chinese simplex rights (Yilin), Brazilian Portuguese rights (WMF Martin Fontes), Portuguese rights (Rélogio d’Agua), France (Stock, Paperback Sublicense: Le Livre de Poche), Italy (Bompiani), Netherlands (Bezige Bij), Denmark (Palomar), Sweden (Nirstedt/litteratur), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Finland (Siltala), Czech Republic (Akropolis), Bulgaria (Janet 45), Romania (Humanitas), Greece (Gutenberg)
Holy Winter 20/21
The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic cut short Maria Stepanova’s stay in Cambridge, UK, in March 2020. Back in Russia, she spent the ensuing months in a state of torpor – the world...
USA & Canada (New Directions), UK & Commonwealth (Bloodaxe), Italy (Bompiani), Sweden (Nirstedt/litteratur), Greece (Vakxikon)
The Body Returns
Even before the international success of her first work of prose, Post-Memory, Maria Stepanova was a famous author. For twenty years, she has been contributing to shaping Moscow’s...
Italy (Bompiani)
Girls Without Clothes
The contents of the Suhrkamp-edition are also included in the Italian selection of poems to be published by Bompiani and the Swedish edition of The Body Returns (Kroppens återkomst), published by Nirstedt/literatur in 2021. Other language rights are available.
Greece (Vakxikon)
In Memory of Memory
Montpellier, 1908: the photograph of a young woman by an easel or »Grandma on the barricades«, as the family calls it. Pre-Revolution portraits, postcards from Venice, Montpellier, or Nizhny...
USA (New Directions), Canada (Book*hug), UK & Commonwealth (Fitzcarraldo), Spanish world rights (Acantilado), Chinese simplex rights (Yilin), Brazilian Portuguese rights (WMF Martins Fontes), Portuguese rights (Relógio D'Água), France (Stock, Paperback Sublicense: Le Livre de Poche), Italy (Bompiani), Netherlands (De Bezige Bij), Denmark (Palomar), Sweden (Nirstedt/litteratur), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Finland (Siltala), Korea (Bokbok Seoga), Japan (Hakusuisha), Poland (Prószyński), Czech Republic (Akropolis), Hungary (Park), Bulgaria (Janet45), Romania (Humanitas), Lithuania (Alma Littera), Croatia (Fraktura), Serbia (Booka), Slovenia (Beletrina), Turkey (CAN), Greece (Vakxikon), North Macedonia (Bata)