We are excited to invite you to the book launch of "Spring in Siberia" by Artem Mozgovoy, taking place on April 19th at 7pm at The Common Press Bookshop.
"Spring in Siberia" is a passionate coming-of-age story that offers a lens into the missed opportunities of Perestroika and post-Soviet Russia; it follows Siberian Alexey as he grows up searching for love, artistic expression, and his freedom. Despite struggling against a developing society of graft and thuggery, Alexey's story is one ultimately of hope and resilience, and the beautiful writing will transport you to a world of claustrophobia, enchantment, and secret love.
Artem was born in a small town in Central Siberia during the fall of the Soviet Union. He began his career as a cadet journalist in a local newspaper at the age of sixteen and eventually became an editor-in-chief at twenty-six. In 2011 as Russia began legalizing its persecution of gay people, he left his homeland and has since lived in six different countries, including the US. Today, Artem holds a Luxembourgish passport, speaks five languages, and resides in Belgium with his Romanian partner.
Please join us for what promises to be an unforgettable evening as we celebrate this incredible book. We look forward to seeing you there!
A work of earnest, grounded, and ultimately hopeful testimony of selfhood at the brink
~ Ocean Vuong, the author of the international best-seller On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.
From the novel:
‘I'm afraid that I love you,' my classmate spoke quickly and quietly, but I managed to catch his words before they melted in the evening smoke. We were standing on the sixteenth-story balcony, on the top floor of the tallest building in our city. The three walls of the balcony were smothered in smut and graffiti, its floor was thick with grime and cigarette stubs, but we were left alone and felt safe there, far from all the turmoil down at ground level. On that balcony we spent hours talking, watching our bleak and dire town, which seemed even gloomier than usual on that miserable mid-April night. ‘And you, do you think you love me?' my classmate turned away from the town and looked at me with both a glimpse of hope and the certainty of rejection evident in his wild black eyes. I stood still, shivering slightly, shocked by this confession which, to me, seemed to have come out of nowhere.
