A once-famous dancer faces a heartbreaking choice in this thrilling novel set in the cutthroat world of Russian ballet
‘Outside the rounded window of the plane, the lights of St Petersburg glimmer through the clouds… The city is utterly familiar and unknown at the same time; it is the face of someone you used to love…’
Prima ballerina Natalia Leonova was once celebrated across the world, her signature bravura in demand on stages from St Petersburg to Paris and New York. But at the peak of her career, a devastating accident forces her to retire.
Injured and alone, the ghosts of Natalia’s former life begin to resurface: her loving, but difficult mother, her impoverished childhood, the friendships destroyed by her single-minded ambition. Above all, she remembers the two gifted dancers, Dmitri and Alexander, who were responsible for her soaring highs, her darkest hours and, ultimately, her downfall.
When Dmitri resurfaces with a tantalising offer for Natalia to make a comeback in her signature role of Giselle, she must decide whether she should risk everything for the chance to dance again.
Painting a captivating portrait of a world in which ruthless determination, romantic desire and sublime artistry collide, CITY OF NIGHT BIRDS unveils the making of a dancer with profound intimacy and breathtaking scope.
Juhea Kim was born in South Korea, raised in Portland, Oregon and now lives in London. She is the author of the novel Beasts of a Little Land, (Oneworld 2021) which has sold over 20,000 copies. It won the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award, Russia’s largest annual prize in literature, and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. She received a BA in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University, and her writing has been published in Granta, The Times Literary Supplement, the Independent, Zyzzyva, Guernica and elsewhere. Ballet has been a passion all Juhea’s life. She studied ballet from the age of nine and took it up again while writing City of Night Birds.
My thoughts: This was so, so good. I was completely drawn into Natalia’s world, the rigidly controlled, intense world of Russian Ballet, the passions and jealousies, the complex and often messy relationships between the dancers and their art.
Looking back over her impoverished childhood, the strict training at the Mariinsky company and the heights of her career as a soloist at the Bolshoi and Paris ballet companies, Natalia (Natasha to her friends, in the Russian tradition), charts the friendships, rivalries and romances that she has never fully understood or emotionally dealt with, either on stage or off.
I am familiar with both St Petersburg and Moscow, as well as Paris, the locations Natalia lives and loves in. Her mother’s Soviet era crumbling apartment building, the opulence of the theatres where she performs, brought vividly to life through the incredible writing of Juhea Kim, detailed and compelling.
I am a huge ballet fan, and love books written about the art form – both fiction and non-fiction, but I think even someone with little or only a passing interest in dance would enjoy this for the very human emotions – set in juxtaposition to the rigidly enforced rules of Russian ballet. The characters are beautifully rendered, their claustrophobic world, where the only people they really see are other dancers, the quasi incestuous nature of their tangled relationships are just *chef’s kiss*
We’re only in January and already I know this is going to be a reading highlight of 2025 for me.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
