Paper Mache 1917 (paperback)

Paper Mache 1917 is the author's first novella and celebrates the centenary of the Russian Revolution. The epic work explores timeless themes of war, love and hate, tragedy and redemption and offers a fresh historical look at the revolutionary forces unleashed before and after the Russian Revolution in 1917. In some cases, the story uses images made popular by Imaginism, a poetic school founded in Moscow after the Revolution in 1918. The story opens in 1905 and follows the lives of Johan Wagner, a radio specialist in the German Wehrmacht and Rosa Kautsky, a Polish born pianist and translator. The story performs a delicate dance between the meta and macro of people and places in a complex time - against the backdrop of the two major ideologies of the 20th century: the rise of German National Socialism and Soviet Communism. Original translations capture the creative forces of writers like Marina Tsvetaeva, and Goethe - voices not often heard in the West.