Wound
A breathtaking novel of grief, love, creativity and a young woman's queer and artistic awakening.
In the days after her mother's death from breast cancer, Oksana, a young queer poet, decides to return her mother's ashes to their working-class hometown in Siberia. It is a journey home that will take her through the raw, almost dreamlike emotions of early grief through to an acceptance of the wound that death leaves behind. As she navigates the rituals of parting, Oksana feels her way through memory and heartache with a wry humour, reflecting on her complex relationship with her mother and on her own experiences of love, loss, sexuality and the search for home.Powerful, lyrical and precise, this extraordinary debut is a novel which blurs the line between reality and creation. Wound is a both an exploration of grief and a journey towards love, happiness and creative fulfilment.Translated from the Russian by Elina Alter"This is not just an amazing novel, extremely frank, extremely accurate and extremely addictive, but, perhaps, a book about finding happiness" The Blueprint"Wound is a poet's novel . . . a primer on feminist thought for readers with Pushkin in their veins" European Review of BooksOksana Vasyakina is a poet, activist and novelist. She was born in 1989 to a working-class family in the Siberian city of Ust-Ilimsk, Russia. In 2019 she was awarded the Lyceum Prize for her poetry, which appears in English translation in n+1, in the collection This Is Us Losing Count and in PEN America's Verses on the Vanguard: Russian Poetry Today. Her autofictional debut novel, Wound, won the prestigious NOS literary prize in 2021, and was additionally chosen as the Critics' Academy Choice.
Author: Oksana Vasyakina
Format: Paperback, 304 pages, 128mm x 196mm, 220 g
Published: 2024, Quercus Publishing, United Kingdom
Genre: General & Literary Fiction
A breathtaking novel of grief, love, creativity and a young woman's queer and artistic awakening.
In the days after her mother's death from breast cancer, Oksana, a young queer poet, decides to return her mother's ashes to their working-class hometown in Siberia. It is a journey home that will take her through the raw, almost dreamlike emotions of early grief through to an acceptance of the wound that death leaves behind. As she navigates the rituals of parting, Oksana feels her way through memory and heartache with a wry humour, reflecting on her complex relationship with her mother and on her own experiences of love, loss, sexuality and the search for home.Powerful, lyrical and precise, this extraordinary debut is a novel which blurs the line between reality and creation. Wound is a both an exploration of grief and a journey towards love, happiness and creative fulfilment.Translated from the Russian by Elina Alter"This is not just an amazing novel, extremely frank, extremely accurate and extremely addictive, but, perhaps, a book about finding happiness" The Blueprint"Wound is a poet's novel . . . a primer on feminist thought for readers with Pushkin in their veins" European Review of BooksOksana Vasyakina is a poet, activist and novelist. She was born in 1989 to a working-class family in the Siberian city of Ust-Ilimsk, Russia. In 2019 she was awarded the Lyceum Prize for her poetry, which appears in English translation in n+1, in the collection This Is Us Losing Count and in PEN America's Verses on the Vanguard: Russian Poetry Today. Her autofictional debut novel, Wound, won the prestigious NOS literary prize in 2021, and was additionally chosen as the Critics' Academy Choice.