Vita Nostra

Marina Dyachenko, Sergey Dyachenko

A haunting, intellectually charged fantasy, this novel follows teenage Sofia as a strange encounter draws her into a secretive university where language, reality, and human identity are inseparably linked. As her studies grow increasingly demanding and surreal, she must surrender familiar assumptions about the world and confront the unsettling cost of knowledge. Blending psychological tension, metaphysical mystery, and coming-of-age themes, the story explores transformation, free will, and the limits of human understanding. The Dyachenkos’ imaginative prose creates an atmosphere that is both dreamlike and unnervingly precise.