Nadezhda in the Dark

A queer anthem for doomed youth by the author of Virtuoso and The Natashas.

Two women sit side-by-side on the edge of a bed as night falls. Both emigrated from the Soviet Union as children, the unnamed narrator from Soviet Kharkov, and her girlfriend, Nadezhda, from Soviet Moscow to Berlin.

A thigh shifts, fingers fold in, a shoulder is lowered. It is the longest night of the year.

Neither speak.

The silence between them is filled with hidden messages from Russian pop music, the raids of Moscow clubs, and the suicide of their friend Pasha. Decades resurface from the Stalin era and the solace of the Soviet poets of the Silver Age.

As the requiem inside the narrator's head expands within the darkness of the room, she asks the all-important question: what does it mean to have hope?