It's the End of the World My Love
Otherworldly forces, dark phantasmagoria, the horrors of underground life, adolescence and rebellion, myth and fairy tale all swirl in Alla Gorbunova's audacious and spectacular novel.
Children, students, beggars, young poets: Alla Gorbunova's heroes and heroines live their lives intensely, experiencing the longing, joy, anticipation, and heartbreak of youth in 1990s Saint Petersburg. But Gorbunova's interconnected episodes don't limit themselves to the realm of the everyday, as they move from harsh, material realities to delirious dark fantasies. Characters escape, decline, self-destruct, and transform. In vivid prose she conjures a fragile and haunted society, and renders it with frank and uncompromising tenderness. A stunning work of fiction, It's the End of the World, My Love is a compassionate, terrifying, and rewarding book from an undeniable literary voice.
Alla Gorbunova has published five books of poetry and received the Andrei Bely Prize for her 2019 collection Inside Starfall. Her first collection of short prose, Ings & Oughts, was published in 2017 by the Saint Petersburg publishing house Limbus Press. Her books have been translated into more than 10 languages.
Elina Alter is a writer and translator living in New York. She is an oral history fellow at the Yiddish Book Center and the editor of Circumference, a journal of translation and international culture.
