The Revolution of Marina M. - Hardcover

"The Revolution of Marina M. takes us deep inside the Russian Revolution and lets us witness it through a pair of remarkable eyes. Marina is a female Zhivago - a poet who uses her intelligence, her passion, and her love of language to interpret and survive the political turmoil around her. Janet Fitch is a wonderful writer and this might be her best book."--David Ebershoff, author of The Danish Girl and The 19th Wife

"Incandescent. Fitch has expertly drawn the world of Russia in 1916 in flurries of white, like an exquisite snow globe, and then nudged it to the edge of a precipice, until in one jarring push, it falls. It crashes and each brilliant shard lifts and swirls. Poets, artists, profiteers, soldiers, cult leaders, sadists, idealists, blood, sex, hope all piecing together in a new life, a new country. The brilliant Janet Fitch has written yet another powerful, kaleidoscopic novel."--Cynthia Bond, author of Ruby

"There's brilliance in this book: concept, structure, style. If the horrors associated with the Russian revolution freeze your blood, remember the fire and brimstone of our own Civil War. Read this novel for the passion of the main character, a girl becoming woman and poet with ten times the vitality and intellect of Scarlett O'Hara."--Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab's Wife and Abundance, a Novel of Marie-Antoinette

"Ambitious, vivid, engrossing. Fitch puts flesh and bones on one of the most tumultuous times in human history, a vast canvas filled with the rising up the oppressed, naive hope, abrupt reversals and crushing betrayals. The novel is a virtuoso rendition of the time, buoyed by Fitch's impeccable research and her bold, unforgettable prose."--Susan Sherman, author of If You Are There and The Little Russian

"In this lusty and intelligent novel, Fitch brilliantly entwines the blooming of a teenage girl with the bursting of a country, and tells their story with such intensity and urgency you can nearly hear the thundering hoofbeats of time and feel the shaking through the pages. This is an epic deserving comparison to the Russian masterworks -- not for its size, but for its scope, not for its subject, but for the sweep with which it meets it. Rarely have I ever known history to come so fully, fiercely alive."--Josh Weil, author of The Great Glass Sea

"An achingly lyric chronicle of the Russian Revolution seen through the eyes of one of its daughters of privilege as she skirts the peripheries of her own adulthood. Fundamentally though, it is a story of the insurgent politics of a woman's heart -- whom and how she loves, what governs, betrays, or becomes her. The beauty of this book broke me open. Janet Fitch is stunningly, startlingly talented."--Jill Alexander Essbaum, author of Hausfrau

"Fitch captures the epic grandeur of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, situating her characters in the pages of authentic history. Yet she also infuses her protagonists with transgressive sexual energy...vividly portraying Marina's sexual awakenings as she falls in and out of love.... Readers of Tolstoy, Boris Pasternak, and Margaret Mitchell will thrill to this narrative of women in love during the cataclysm of war."--Barbara Conaty, Library Journal

"The resilient Marina has much in common with the modern heroines of the author's previous books and is a protagonist worth following."--Publishers Weekly

"A captivating novel starring an unforgettable heroine, The Revolution of Marina M. shows you a side to the Russian Revolution you've never seen before."--Sadie Trombetta, Bustle

"Fitch's novel presents a richly described, on-the-street view of the revolution's transformative, often violent throes.... she provides an excellent sense of history's unpredictability and shows how the desperate pursuit of survival leads to morally compromising decisions...Fitch's cinematic storytelling and Marina's vibrant personality are standout elements in this dramatic novel."--Sarah Johnson, Booklist

From the mega-bestselling author of White Oleander and Paint It Black, a sweeping historical saga of the Russian Revolution, as seen through the eyes of one young woman
One of Entertainment Weekly's Must-Read Books of Fall 2017A PopSugar Favorite Book of 2017

St. Petersburg, New Year's Eve, 1916. Marina Makarova is a young woman of privilege who aches to break free of the constraints of her genteel life, a life about to be violently upended by the vast forces of history. Swept up on these tides, Marina will join the marches for workers' rights, fall in love with a radical young poet, and betray everything she holds dear, before being betrayed in turn.

As her country goes through almost unimaginable upheaval, Marina's own coming-of-age unfolds, marked by deep passion and devastating loss, and the private heroism of an ordinary woman living through extraordinary times. This is the epic, mesmerizing story of one indomitable woman's journey through some of the most dramatic events of the last century.