Leonardo's Handwriting

Dina Rubina’s “Leonardo’s Handwriting” is a mystical novel about the gift and curse of clairvoyance. The author’s future brilliant circus artist and stunt performer, Anna Nesterенко, grew up in a foster family and didn’t know her parents. But among her distant relatives was none other than the famous Wolf Messing. Perhaps it was from him that she inherited her extraordinary gift—mirrors talk to Nюта. Nюта felt a secret connection to mirrors from early childhood: she wrote in “mirror” handwriting like Leonardo da Vinci; mirrors came to her in dreams; an old scholar revealed to her the secrets of optics, with the help of which she will later stage incredible magical mirror shows. And from time to time, always suddenly, the mirrors open up into a terrifying abyss, and Nюта sees the future in them. But it’s long been known that the gift of foreseeing is not really a gift, but a curse…

Dina Rubina on the novel: “This novel began strangely. It began in my sister’s kitchen in Boston. We were talking about how hard it is for a musician to earn a living… And on her last word, a bassoon sounded inside me—and I understood that it sounded like a novel. You know, like an unborn novel—it calls to me from somewhere. And I understood: the musician was perhaps driving to a rehearsal, but of course what’s needed is love. A deadly love, tearing at the heart, tragic—because happy love has never interested anyone.”