Privyet! Anna

To be published 2027

Some words are better left unspoken, so we write them instead.

The Shanxi mountains will always loom over Anna, Sanmei and Suxin.

The teenage girls are among the millions commanded to the countryside by Chairman Mao. Packed onto trains filled with idealistic zealots sneering at disgraced intelligentsia, the tracks dump them into the bruises and brutal simplicity of rural life.

Stifled by the unending revolution, the trio’s only respite is a shared love of prose, poetry and passion for a sent-down boy. These innocent devotions comfort them, but consequences, both real and imagined, soon bite. Disappointment in an impossibly distant future leads one of them to the unthinkable on a lonely park bench.

Across the nation, time callously marches forward. For the two that remain, grief soon scabs over with shame. Faced with bleak tomorrows, how far do the shadows of yesteryear reach?