Eisen

A novel about cinema, history, and what it means to create when freedom is contingentIn Eisen, Guzel Yakhina turns her formidable historical imagination to the life of Sergei Eisenstein, the revolutionary filmmaker who reshaped cinema—and was nearly crushed by the system he helped glorify. From the triumph of Battleship Potemkin to the torment of censorship, exile, and artistic compromise under Stalin, Yakhina traces Eisenstein’s life as a drama of creation under pressure. Rather than a conventional biography, Eisen is a literary portrait, rendered in vivid, episodic scenes that mirror Eisenstein’s own theory of montage. Moscow, Berlin, Paris, and Mexico flicker past as art, politics, sexuality, and power collide. Yakhina explores the cost of genius in an authoritarian world, the body as both instrument and battleground, and the impossible demand placed on artists to serve ideology without losing themselves. 

Born in Kazan, Guzel Yakhina is a Russian author and screenwriter. She is the winner of the Big Book literary prize and the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award. She has denounced Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, stating publicly that “This is not my war. I refuse to consider it mine.” Her novel A Volga Tale (Europa, 2023) was described as “magnificent” by Ron Charles, “sumptuous” by the Wall Street Journal, and as a “rich epic” in the New Yorker. Polly Gannon is a literary translator and quilter. She holds a PhD in Russian literature from Cornell University. For many years, she has taught intersectional cultural studies, translation and poetry. She lives in Berlin.