https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk Henley-on-Thames Fri, 01 May 2026 15:34:41 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-Bell-Background-Blue-32x32.png https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk 32 32 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/the-disappearing-act/ Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=54012 A haunting novel on identity, exile and the fragile desire to disappear by Maria Stepanova, one of Russia's greatest living writers. 

]]> 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.

]]> https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/in-memory-of-memory/ Wed, 08 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=36502 With the death of her aunt, Maria Stepanova is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs, postcards, diaries, and heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository of a century of life in Russia. Carefully reassembled, these shards tell the story of how a seemingly ordinary Jewish family managed to survive the twentieth century.

]]> With the death of her aunt, Maria Stepanova is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs, old postcards, letters, diaries, and heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository of a century of life in Russia. Carefully reassembled with calm, steady hands, these shards tell the story of how a seemingly ordinary Jewish family somehow managed to survive the myriad persecutions and repressions of the last century. Dipping into various forms – essay, fiction, memoir, travelogue and historical documents – Stepanova’s In Memory of Memory assembles a vast panorama of ideas and personalities and offers an entirely new and bold exploration of cultural and personal memory.

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