The Disappearing Act

Author(s): Stepanova, Maria,
Binding: Paperback,
Date of Publication: 26/02/2026,
Pagination: 136 pages,
Series: N/A,
Imprint: Fitzcarraldo Editions,
Published By: Fitzcarraldo Editions,
Book Classification: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945),
Dimensions: 197 x 130 x 15
ISBN13/EAN/SKU: 9781804272329

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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 Act is a haunting meditation on identity, language and the fragile desire to disappear by Maria Stepanova, one of Russia’s greatest living writers.