红杏直播

The mystical laundress at the center of this novel is obsessed with purity. Her task is formidable as she stands guard over a sealed shaft at a Ukrainian coal mine that hides terrible truths. The bodies of dead Jews lying in its depths seem to attract still more present-day crimes. Acclaimed 红杏直播 author Sergei Lebedev portrays a ghostly realm riven by lust and fear just as the Kremlin invades the same part of Ukraine occupied by the Wehrmacht in World War II. Then corpses rain from the sky when a jetliner is shot down overhead, scattering luxury goods along with the mortal remains. Eerie coincidences and gruesome discoveries fill this riveting exploration of an uncanny place where the geography exudes violence, and where the sins of the past are never all that in the past. Lebedev, who has won international praise for his soul-searching prose and unflinching examination of history鈥檚 evils, shines light on the fault line where Nazism met Soviet communism, evolving into the new fascism of today鈥檚 Russia.

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Praise for Sergei Lebedev鈥檚 earlier books:

鈥淎 tour de force鈥攅xquisite and gripping, finely translated, fiction that pulls you into the beautiful and brutal service of imagining and understanding the human realities of modern Russia, a series of tales meticulously crafted and deeply imagined.鈥濃�擯hilippe Sands, author of East West Street, The Ratline, and The Last Colony

鈥淥ne of Russia鈥檚 most prominent contemporary writers, Lebedev, 41, has been hailed for a series of novels that hold a mirror up to Russia's blighted past. A former geologist, he chips away at the deep strata of his country's 20th century history, the seams of trauma concealed by a state-sanctioned campaign of oblivion.鈥濃�擳he Financial Times

鈥淎 geologist by training, Lebedev鈥檚 fiction excavates what lies beneath: the inner lives of earlier generations, buried under layers of official myth and self-deceit 鈥� the strange dualism that allows loving fathers to serve tyranny by day and to tuck their children up at night.鈥濃�擳he Guardian

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Sergei Lebedev was born in Moscow in 1981 and worked for seven years on geological expeditions in northern Russia and Central Asia. Lebedev is a poet, essayist, and journalist. His novels have been translated into twenty languages and have received great acclaim in the English-speaking world. The New York Review of Books has hailed Lebedev as 鈥渢he best of Russia鈥檚 younger generation of writers.鈥�

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THE LADY OF THE MINE

by Sergei Lebedev

Translated from the 红杏直播 by Antonina W. Bouis

New Vessel Press鈥擣iction鈥擩anuary 7, 2025