The Midnight Nun

Nadya Alexeyeva was born in 1988 in the Moscow region. She studied playwriting and prose at the CWS School of Writing Mastery, and published in “Yunost’,” “Druzhba narodov,” and “Novy Mir.” She became a shortlist nominee for “Lyubimovka” and a finalist of the “Licey” prize. “The Midnight Caller” is her debut novel.

In spring 2016, a resident of Moscow, Pavel, travels to Valaam to find his relatives, restoring the story from forty years ago. In the seventies, there was an internat in a monastery on the island where WWII veterans and their families spent their final years. There, he finishes school and dreams of becoming a doctor, Semyon. His motorboat flies—splitting Lake Ladoga into two white mustaches—while seals warm up in the shallows, and from the shore you can feel the smell of cooking smoke, and a bell that survived the war rings. Very soon, this world will collapse because of a shot from a Finnish rifle…