Nadezhda in the Dark by Yelena Moskovitch
This is truly what novels written in verse should be. Beautiful and devastating in equal measure, Moskovich reminds us that writing can be at its best when experimented with. Told over the span of one night, and arguably one sentence, this book is a blend of both styles and cultures. Following the Ukrainian Jewish narrator as she rests by her Russian lover in the dark, there are no words exchanged. Instead, what lies in the space between is history, both their own and that of their cultures. There is no clean plot, no clean anything left in their world. There is a series of vignettes: lesbian sex, folk tales, institutional antisemitism, Soviet jokes, the invasion of Ukraine. Through all of it though, is a love that, while it cannot fix their problems, shines beyond reason and uncertainty.
Nadezhda in the Dark by Yelena Moskovitch, (List Price: $17.95, Dzanc Books, 9781938603518, January 2026)
Reviewed by Oliver, Epilogue: Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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I hope I don’t give too much away, but I was quite inspired by Witness, with Harrison Ford amongst the Amish. I was really interested in this idea of a gangster amongst peacemakers, which is really what Witness is. I find that really fascinating. I became interested in Celtic Christianity because it was very revolutionary at the time in ways that we slightly forget. This was a world of utter warlordism, a very, very violent world and it was pagan. All of that was predicated on the idea that it was good to be strong and kill people. If gods were with you, that’s what would happen. If gods weren’t with you, you’d be weak. The idea of a religion that was founded on the idea that you might want to be weak, or you might want to be humble, was completely insane to these people. I mean, they looked at it and just went, “You’re mad! What are you talking about?”
“Why was Anne Boleyn executed? This was a question I asked myself when writing The Beheading Game, in which Anne Boleyn wakes up after her own execution, escapes from her grave in the Tower of London, sews her head back on, and goes on a revenge quest to kill Henry VIII before he can marry his next wife, Jane Seymour. Legally, the answer is she was executed because she was convicted of the crimes of treason, adultery and incest, but most historians today agree those charges were probably false. So, how did Anne go from being a queen consort, steps from the seat of English power, to climbing the steps to the scaffold in a matter of months? Sometimes the simplest explanation is the most likely, and, although I came to many answers to this question during my research, all of them circled around one central theme: misogyny.”
“When we think of environmental disaster or climate change, we often think of catastrophic events—the Californian or Australian wildfires, deadly floods in Bangladesh or Pakistan, a destructive typhoon or hurricane. When events like those becomes the point of focus, we stop thinking about other kinds of destruction and degradation. I wanted to find a way to reveal what Rob Nixon called slow violence. I didn’t want the major catastrophes to entirely dominate the novel; I wanted to bring slower instances of change to the foreground.”
“I am endlessly fascinated by sexuality—it’s almost embarrassing how much it shows in my published works. Similarly, I’m always exploring grief and the loss of innocence. Writing 200 Monas felt like a fun way to explore both simultaneously. The intersection between grief and sex somehow reminded me of being young, when the death of my father coincided with my spring awakening; I was always seeking refuge in romantic relationships, sexy films, and perverted conversations with my friends. I wanted to write something that captured that dichotomy in some way, this idea of being sad and horny at the same time.”
“There are only so many stories out there—people say seven—but for me, the question is always: what is the question I want to ask?…In Kin, the question I was interested in interrogating is the idea of searching for one’s mother. The classic story tells us, of course you search for your mother. If someone says, I don’t know where my mother is, we frame it as a brave quest to find her. But I wanted to question that impulse. Is it always better to know? Is it okay not to know? Can we learn to be satisfied with not knowing? In real life, people can be satisfied with what they have. In real life, you can marry someone who isn’t the person you once dreamed of and still have a good life. In a story, that’s often treated as an unpardonable compromise. I’m trying to bring into story life the wisdom we already know from real life.”
