Maya & Natasha
This beautiful debut novel set inside the captivating global of Cold War Soviet ballet follows the fates of twin sisters whose bond is competitive, complex, however in no way damaged.
Maya and Natasha are twin sisters born inside the midst of the Siege of Leningrad in 1941 and right now deserted by way of their mom, a prima ballerina at the Kirov Ballet who would alternatively die than now not dance.
Taken in by way of their mom’s high-quality pal on the Kirov, the ladies are raised to be dancers themselves. The Vaganova Ballet Academy—and the totalitarian Soviet regime—is the only international they realize.
In 1958, now seniors at the Vaganova at the peak of the Cold War, all Maya and Natasha and their classmates want is to dance with the Kirov, and to sign up for the enterprise on its tour to America next yr. But a new law from the Kremlin upends Maya and Natasha’s because of fears of defection, own family participants may also not travel overseas collectively. The Kirov can simplest take delivery of one in every of them.
Maya, lengthy acquainted with dwelling in her sister’s shadow, accepts her sour fate, till a brand new dance accomplice conjures up her to dream bigger and practice more difficult. For the primary time—and at the most harsh viable second—the sisters are equally matched. And then one sister betrays the opposite, altering their lives forever and splitting them in , although neither will stray some distance from the alternative’s orbit.
As one of the twins pursues her ballet profession and reviews a global out of doors Russia for the primary time, the alternative is cast in an epic film edition of War and Peace, produced and financed via the Soviet State.
As the Cold War heats up, Maya and Natasha must confront their to East as opposed to West; to the government that stored them versus their desires of freedom; and, always, to each different.