Staff Pick
This book absolutely delivers on the promise of its simple title: it is a bruising, beautiful book that I couldn’t put down, even as each page pulsed with the heartache of existing in an unforgiving world. The narrator, Oksana, is a queer, Russian poet whose mother has recently passed. As she travels to their former home of Siberia, she thinks about her past with her mom and her mom’s tumultuous relationships; Oksana’s own complicated romantic history; the act of writing and the power of language; inheritance, work, survival, identity… The list goes on. Vasyakina is such an exciting, fresh voice, and Elina Alter has done an incredible job translating this novel. Everyone should read Wound. Recommended By Kelsey F., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
For fans of Maggie Nelson and Eileen Myles, the lyrical and deeply moving story of a young queer woman's journey across Russia to inter her mother's ashes and to understand her sexuality, femininity, and grief
From one of Russia's most exciting new voices, Wound follows a young lesbian poet on a journey from Moscow to her hometown in Siberia, where she has promised to bury her mother's ashes. Woven throughout this fascinating travel narrative are harrowing and at times sublime memories of her childhood and her sexual and artistic awakening. As she carefully documents her grief and interrogates her past, the narrator of Oksana Vasyakina's autobiographical novel meditates on queerness, death, and love and finds new words for understanding her relationship with her mother, her country, her sexuality, and her identity as an artist.
A sensual, whip-smart account of the complicated dynamics of queer life in present-day Siberia and Moscow, Wound is also in conversation with feminist thinkers and artists, including Susan Sontag, Louise Bourgeois, and Monique Wittig, locating Vasyakina's work in a rich and exciting international literary tradition.
Review
"[A] stirring English-language debut...The narrative is distinguished by its dry wit and philosophical import...Vasyakina stuns with this bold and emotionally raw chronicle." — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"[A] magnificent debut...which will take you on a journey unlike any other." — Chaya Colman and Sophie Ezra, Glamour
Review
"Both an elegy to the dead and a homecoming...raw, hypnotic." — Fernanda Eberstadt, The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
OKSANA VASYAKINA is a Russian poet and curator. Her debut poetry collection, Women's Prose, was short-listed for the Andrei Bely Prize in 2016, and the original Russian-language edition of Wound won the NOS Prize in 2021. She lives in Moscow, where she teaches courses on writing and feminist literature.
ELINA ALTER is a writer and translator. Her work appears in The Los Angeles Review of Books, BOMB, The Paris Review, The New England Review, and elsewhere. She is the editor of Circumference, a journal of translation and international culture.