- Published: 03/04/2014
- ISBN: 9781847087430
- 129x20mm
- 304 pages
The Banner of the Passing Clouds
Anthea Nicholson
Iosif Dzhugashvili is born on the day Stalin dies and is given his name by a zealous hospital official. Young Iosif grows up haunted by his great namesake, convinced that the dictator has found a new dwelling place within his chest, behind his heart. But when Iosif unwittingly destroys his family’s happiness he is forced to question his lifelong loyalties to Stalin’s ghost.
£8.99
The Banner of the Passing Clouds is marked by an almost uncanny insight into its historical time and place. All is rendered with poignant clarity. There is a deep and hard-won compassion at work in this book, a compassion that is a kind of wisdom
Anne Michaels, author, Fugitive Pieces
A tale that suggests how naked we are when the mighty ideologies around us fall... manages to be at once epic and claustrophobic, and, above all, entrancing
Samantha Harvey, author, Wilderness
[A] startling debut... Nicholson has created a weird and compelling voice that somehow manages to be by turns unsettling, wise and pierced with regret... A passionate humanism simmers between the lines... Psychologically astute, and intense with insight
