We’re delighted to welcome author Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry to Real Magic Books in collaboration with Indigo Press on Saturday 18 November. Kristina will be in conversation with Sophie, celebrating the release of her brilliant book Between The Dog and the Wolf.

We have copies available in the shop now, come and pick up a copy and read before the event. Free drink with every ticket

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Moscow, 1985. Four teenagers – Anya, Milka, Petya and Aleksey, whose lives, like those of their Western counterparts, are fuelled by sex, alcohol and cigarettes – yearn for a world of Levi’s, Queen, foreign travel and the freedom to choose their fates. Instead, they encounter heartbreak and tragedy, while all around them Soviet policies, cruel but familiar, are giving way to untested concepts such as glasnost and perestroika and a brief flourishing of hope before the next repressive regime take root.

This is the hour between dog and wolf, twilight, when one state has ended and another has not quite begun.

Although it depicts a chaotic and desperate era, this exceptional debut novel pulsates with life. It is radiant with friendship and love, the power of international literature, values and politics, as its characters struggle to survive, to save their country and one another.

TICKETS

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‘Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry shows us what it was like to be a teenager – full of friendship, love and hormones – during the chaos of perestroika. What a decade: so many different communist leaders, the collapse of an empire, terrifying coups, and the growth of powerful oligarchs. Full of heartbreak, beautifully written. I swallowed it up.’
— Suzanne Joinson, author of A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar

‘Between Dog and Wolf depicts friendship with all the passionate intensity of a Ferrante novel – against the rich encyclopaedic detail of late Soviet life.’
— Sasha Dugdale, writer and translator, including In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova

‘An intensely evocative and gorgeously written coming-of-age story.’
— Minneapolis Star Tribune

‘Every reader knows what it’s like to lose a friend, but not everyone knows the loss of a nation. Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry knows both. Her novel immerses us in the tense, passionate, bloody best friendship of two unforgettable young women in the last years of the Soviet state. It is aching and sexy, clear-eyed and heartbreaking, honest and necessary. You will devour it. Between Dog and Wolf is an exquisite, explosive debut.’
— Julia Phillips, author of Disappearing Earth