Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Historical adventure fiction

THE REVOLUTION OF MARINA M.

Janet Fitch

A sweeping, historical saga of the Russian Revolution – as seen through the eyes of one young woman.

St. Petersburg, New Year's Eve, 1916. Marina Makarova is a young woman of privilege who aches to break free of the constraints of her genteel life, a life about to be violently upended by the vast forces of history. Swept up on these tides, Marina will join the marches for workers' rights, fall in love with a radical young poet, and betray everything she holds dear, before being betrayed in turn.

As her country goes through almost unimaginable upheaval, Marina's own coming-of-age unfolds, marked by deep passion and devastating loss, and the private heroism of an ordinary woman living through extraordinary times.

This is the epic, mesmerizing story of one indomitable woman's journey through some of the most dramatic events of the last century.

Janet read Crime and Punishment as a young teenager, and it cemented a fascination with Russia and its culture and literature that would forever change her life. She took Russian in high school, studied abroad in England with a focus on Russian studies and then spent a summer at the Leningrad Polytechnic University. That summer on the banks of the Neva turned her into a writer and this novel is the culmination of her obsession and a lifetime spent honing her craft.

Available products
Book Published 2017-11-07 by Little Brown
Book Published 2017-11-07 by Little Brown

Comments

Fitch captures the epic grandeur of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, situating her characters in the pages of authentic history. Yet she also infuses her characters with transgressive sexual energy...Readers of Tolstoy, Boris Pasternak, and Margaret Mitchell will thrill to this narrative of women in love during the cataclysm of war.

A story of the insurgent politics of a woman's heart -- of whom and how she loves, of what governs, betrays, or becomes her. The beauty of this book broke me open. Janet Fitch is stunningly, startlingly talented.

There's brilliance in this book: concept, structure, style. When I finished it, I started all over again. If the horrors associated with the Russian revolution freeze your blood, remember the fire and brimstone of our own Civil War. Read this novel for the passion of the main character, a girl becoming woman and poet with ten times the vitality and intellect of Scarlett O'Hara.

The Revolution of Marina M.takes us deep inside the Russian Revolution and lets us witness it through a pair of remarkable eyes.Marina is a female Zhivago — a poet who uses her intelligence, her passion, and her love of language to interpret and survive the political turmoil around her. Janet Fitch is a wonderful writer and this might be her best book. Don't let its Russian-novel length daunt you. Let it transport you.

Stunning and heartbreaking...When I finished reading, my heart ached. I'd fallen head-over-heels with Marina, with her stubborn will to live, with her wild desire and impractical decision making. I hurt when she hurt; I was in love when she was. This is the perfect cold-weather novel to lose yourself in...Just be sure to brace yourself, because your heart might break, too.

Fitch penetrates the heart and soul of her characters. Like Marina herself, Fitch is a poet, and one of the glories of her new novel is the shimmering beauty of language...Above all, Fitch is faithful to the Tolstoyan traditions of the Russian novel, writing about heroic events on an equally heroic scale. Remarkably, she catches and holds our interest...rewarding us with rich and provocative stories, compelling characters, and literary prose of the very highest order.

In her incandescent novel,The Revolution of Marina M.,Janet Fitch has expertly drawn the world of Russia in 1916, in flurries of white, like an exquisite snow globe, like hot wax dripping in cool water, and then nudged it to the edge of a precipice, bit by bit, until in one jarring push, it falls. It crashes and each brilliant shard lifts, reflects and swirls. Poets, artists, profiteers, soldiers, cult leaders, sadists, idealists, blood, sex, hope all piecing together in a new life, a new country. The brilliant Janet Fitch has written yet another powerful, kaleidoscopic novel.

THE REVOLUTION OF MARINA M. by Janet Fitch made Entertainment Weekly’s roundup of “Fall’s 20 Must-Read Books”

Sprawling, immersive...There is plenty of action and drama...It's a pleasure to see Marina develop, her core character strengthening as she tries on new roles.

In this lusty and intelligent novel, Janet Fitch brilliantly entwines the blooming of a teenage girl with the bursting of a country, and tells their story with an intensity and urgency only possible through the melding of both. Filled with the kind of historical detail that can unfurl a world, unafraid to face the great questions of its era and the timeless ones that reach beyond,The Revolution of Marina M.is an epic deserving the inevitable comparison to the Russian masterworks—not for its size, but for its scope, not for its subject, but for the sweep with which it meets it. This is a story in which you hear the thundering hoofbeats of time and feel the shaking through the pages. Rarely have I ever known history to come so fully, fiercely alive.

An extraordinary coming-of-age tale...Marina is by turns adventurous, foolish, romantic, self-destructive, and courageous.

Ambitious, vivid, engrossing,The Revolution of Marina M. puts flesh and bones on one of the most tumultuous times in human history, the Russian Revolution. It’s a vast canvas filled with the rising up the oppressed, naïve hope, abrupt reversals and crushing betrayals. The novel is a virtuoso rendition of the time, buoyed by Fitch’s impeccable research and her bold, unforgettable prose. An absorbing read, one I will not easily forget.

Shimmers with vital energy...The novel luxuriates in exotic period details...The Revolution of Marina M. is hard to put down.

Janet Fitch presents this tumultuous epoch from the viewpoint of a passionate, resilient young woman...With heightened immediacy, Fitch's novel presents a richly described, on-the-street view of the revolution's transformative, often violent throes...The momentum rarely slackens. Fitch's cinematic storytelling and Marina's vibrant personality are standout elements in this dramatic novel.

Fitch's first-person narrative is intensely intimate...As Marina comes of age, she is thrust into the spilled blood on the streets and the plight of the workers and artists...The author's passion seems to reside with Russia itself, exploring its intricate history and soul in good light and bad...Marina's identity changes and she becomes free to blaze into the future.

An epic tale...In this relatable coming-of-age novel, Marina grapples with a changing world and struggles to find her place in it.

Marina's unlikely bildungsroman proves so gripping that it's hard to put down...Fitch depicts [the Revolution] with devastating accuracy and imaginative power...sprawling, majestic.

This is Fitch's most powerful narrative, beautifully and propulsively written... The reading experience genuinely does share the opulence and intimacy of the great Russian masterpieces.

A big, immersive novel for fans of Amor Towles's A Gentleman in Moscow.

Fitch narrows the Russian Revolution to one woman's perspective, crafting a gorgeous epic that's a must-read for historical fiction fans.