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The Lady of the Mine

Brief Description
The extraordinary new novel by the author of Untraceable. A sealed shaft in a Donbas coal mine contains unimaginable horror: layer upon layer of human bodies, the victims of Red and White terror during the Revolution, of Stalin’s purges, of the Einsatzgruppen in the Holocaust. Around... Read More
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A haunting, lyrical meditation on the legacy of dictatorship and atrocity.

A haunting, lyrical meditation on the legacy of dictatorship and atrocity.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

The extraordinary new novel by the author of Untraceable.

A sealed shaft in a Donbas coal mine contains unimaginable horror: layer upon layer of human bodies, the victims of Red and White terror during the Revolution, of Stalin’s purges, of the Einsatzgruppen in the Holocaust.

Around this infamous pit, in a polluted region convulsed once again by war and cruelty when Russia invades Ukraine, the fates of four characters intertwine: a mysterious and powerful laundress whose dedication to cleaning the filth created by the mine attracts the suspicion of the secret police; her innocent daughter Zhanna, left alone by her mother’s death; a brutal Russian militia man, who targets Zhanna; and his boss, a former KGB man turned ruthless servant of Putin. The voice of The Engineer, a murdered Jew who designed and constructed the mine, is a witness to the bloody history of the region and the terrible secret at its heart.

The Lady of the Mine is a haunting, lyrical meditation on the legacy of dictatorship and atrocity.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781035917709

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 09 April 2026

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Apollo

Contributors:

  • Translated by Antonina W. Bouis

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 22.0mm

Width: 128.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 171g

Pages: 240

About the Author

Sergei Lebedev was born in Moscow in 1981 and worked for seven years on geological expeditions in northern Russia and Central Asia. Lebedev is a poet, essayist and journalist. His novels include Oblivion, Untraceable, The Year of the Comet and The Goose Fritz, and have been translated into many languages and received great acclaim in the English-speaking world. The New York Review of Books has hailed Lebedev as ‘the best of Russia's younger generation of writers’.

Antonina W. Bouis is one of the leading translators of Russian literature working today. She has translated over eighty works from authors such as Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Mikhail Bulgakov, Andrei Sakharov, Sergei Dovlatov, and Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Bouis, previously Executive Director of the Soros Foundation in the former USSR, lives in New York City.

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