Book 2026

The Disappearing Act RU

The Disappearing Act
Maria Stepanova
The Disappearing Act The Disappearing Act

 

Information
Realm
Russian
Author
Maria Stepanova
Title
The Disappearing Act
Paratexts

Review blurbs by: Abdulrazak Gurnah, Lea Ypi, Pankaj Mishra, Publishers Weekly, Süddeutsche Zeitung. 

Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Fitzcarraldo Editions
Date of Publication
2026
Material Type
Book
Format
Paperback
Size
19.71 x 12.5cm
Number of Pages
136
ISBN
9781804273239
Language
English
Genre
Novel
Original Price
12.99 GBP
Translator
Sasha Dugdale

Maria Stepanova. The Disappearing Act. Tr. by Sasha Dugdale. Fitzcarraldo Editions: London, 2026.

Description

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 liberation — 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 — and, for a moment, reinvention seems within reach. Oscillating between reality and dream, written in rich, hypnotic prose, The Disappearing Act is a haunting mediation on identity, language and the fragile desire to disappear by Maria Stepanova, one of the greatest living Russian writers. 

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 liberation — 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 — and, for a moment, reinvention seems within reach. Oscillating between reality and dream, written in rich, hypnotic prose, The Disappearing Act is a haunting mediation on identity, language and the fragile desire to disappear by Maria Stepanova, one of the greatest living Russian writers. 

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