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 who invite her to join them. For a moment, reinvention seems within reach. Oscillating between reality and dream, written in rich, hypnotic prose,The Disappearing Actis a haunting meditation on identity, language and the fragile desire to disappear by Maria Stepanova, one of Russias greatest living writers.

Format: Paperback
Published: 2026
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
Pages: 136
Language: English
ISBN 10: 1804272329
ISBN 13: 9781804272329