Simon Sebag-Montefiore, author of The Romanovs “Suspenseful, original and compelling, Disappearing Earth is a strange and haunting voyage into a strange and haunting world.’ “A genuine masterpiece, but one that is easily consumed in a feverish stay-up-all-night bout of reading pleasure.” In a story as propulsive as it is emotionally engaging, and through a young writer’s virtuosic feat of empathy and imagination, this powerful novel provides a new understanding of the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before. We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty – densely wooded forests, open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes and the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska – and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused.

Set on the remote Siberian peninsula of Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth draws us into the world of an astonishing cast of characters, all connected by an unfathomable crime. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the north-eastern edge of Russia, two sisters are abducted. Beautifully written, thought-provoking, intense and cleverly wrought, this is the most extraordinary first novel from a mesmerising new talent.

Disappearing earth novel