ISBN 9780525436225, 0525436227
Trade Paperback | 272 pages
 
An extraordinary, National Book Award-shortlisted debut from an important new voice in fiction: Disappearing Earth gives us a spellbinding story of a kidnapping and its aftermath, set against the gorgeous backdrop of the Russian Far East.

One August afternoon, two sisters—Sofia, eight, and Alyona, eleven—go missing from a beach on the far-flung Kamchatka Peninsula in northeastern Russia. Echoes of their disappearance reverberate across their tightly knit community. Taking us through the year that follows, Disappearing Earth enters the lives of women and girls in Kamchatka, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty—open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes, 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. In a story as propulsive as it is emotionally engaging, this powerful novel brings us to a new understanding of the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before.