by Zilla N.

Vita Nostra is by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, translated from the original Russian by Julia Meitov Hersey.

You need to read it.

Immediately.

Stop reading this newsletter, go to your library website, and reserve a copy. Download an app and buy it on your phone. Don’t hesitate. I’m not asking the impossible.

This book is stunning. It defies explanation in its celestial beauty, its cosmic horror, its deep, dark reality. Vita Nostra is the object, and other books are shadows on the cave wall.

I’m not doing a very good job explaining it. How can you explain a new state of being, an alteration of the mind which leaves you forever changed, a word reverberating?

Let me try again. It’s a book about a magical boarding school, but not like that. It’s a book about the corruption of academia, twisted by power without empathy. It’s a book about the joy and isolation of knowledge. It’s a book about the creation of words. It’s a book that knows that it is a book, and that revels in this knowledge, and you will revel too. It’s a book that will haunt your dreams, and you’ll be grateful, because that means another moment exploring its world.

Read Vita Nostra. You don’t have time to wait.