Thanks to Soumeya Roberts, Jonathan Cobb, and the entire staff of Hannigan Salky Getzler literary agency for everything they do to ensure our success in the capricious world of literature and cinema.
Our sincere gratitude goes to David Pomerico, our incredible editor at Harper Voyager, who peered deeply into the soul of our novel and led the complex process of its adaptation to the American culture.
—Marina and Sergey Dyachenko
My deepest gratitude goes to Lev Grossman, who challenged and inspired me to transfer Vita Nostra from Russian to English, and to Marina and Sergey for trusting me with this process.
I would like to thank Kira Clingen, Susanne Kummel, Anatoly Belilovsky, Tom Crosshill, and Aliette de Bodard for reading and reviewing the novel in its rough unedited infancy, and for encouraging me whenever I felt like I was failing (which was more often than I care to admit).
Many thanks go to the awesome members of the HSG family and Harper Voyager’s editorial staff for answering my neverending questions with infinite patience and grace.
Josh Getzler—Agent G—you are a masterpiece of a human being, a dear friend, and an extraordinary agent. Thanks for standing by me for nine long years, for introducing me to the magnificent David Pomerico, who made my translation rise as close to the original as possible, and for all those pictures of Layla to brighten my days.
Thanks to my family for patiently listening to my endless lectures on the finer points of everything that had been lost in translation. This work is dedicated to the memory of my father, Vladimir, who always said Sasha Samokhina reminded him of me.
—Julia Meitov Hersey
About the Authors
Marina And Sergey Dyachenko, a former actress and a former psychiatrist, are the coauthors of twenty-eight novels and numerous short stories and screenplays. They were born in Ukraine, lived in Russia, and now live in the United States. Their books have been translated into several foreign languages and awarded multiple literary and film prizes, including the 2005 Eurocon award for Best Author. They live in Marina Del Rey, California.
About the Translator
Julia Meitov Hersey originally began her translation of Vita Nostra because she wanted her family to share her love for this striking example of urban psychological science fiction and fantasy, with its literary allusions and ominous atmosphere. Born in Moscow, Julia studied journalism at Moscow State University; at the age of nineteen she moved to Boston, and now lives on a beautiful peninsula north of the city.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
vita nostra. Copyright © 2013 by Sergey Dyachenko and Marina Shyrshova-Dyachenko. Translation © 2013 by Julia Meitov Hersey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first harper voyager hardcover edition published 2018.
Cover Design Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollins Publishers 2018
Cover photographs © Josephine Cardin/Trevillion Images (main image); © Black Digital Cat/Shutterstock (texture)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition NOVEMBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-269461-4
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-269459-1
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* Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, Pandem
* Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, translated by Leo Wiener
* Based on the Julian calendar, Russians still celebrate on January 14 as well, the Old New Year’s.
* Vsevolod Garshin, The Signal and Other Stories. Translated by Captain Rowland Smith of the British Embassy, Petrograd.
* Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods.