WOUND (B PB)

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 AlterThis is not just an amazing novel extremely frank extremely accurate and extremely addictive but perhaps a book about finding happiness The BlueprintWound is a poet's novel . . . a primer on feminist thought for readers with Pushkin in their veins European Review of Books