“Lyrical and emotionally gutting.” — Oprah Daily “Intellectually satisfying [and] artistically profound.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Mesmeric.”— The Paris Review “Vividly awesome and truly great.” —Eileen Myles “Gorgeous, gutting, unforgettable.” —Leni Zumas “Brilliant.” —Michelle Tea An arresting memoir equal parts refugee-coming-of-age story, feminist manifesto, and meditation on motherhood, displacement, gender politics, and art that follows award-winning writer Sophia Shalmiyev’s flight from the Soviet Union, where she was forced to abandon her estranged mother, and her subsequent quest to find her. Russian sentences begin backward, Sophia Shalmiyev tells us on the first page of her striking lyrical memoir. To understand the end of her story, we must go back to the beginning. Born to a Russian mother and an Azerbaijani father, Shalmiyev was raised in the stark oppressiveness of 1980s Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), where anti-Semitism and an imbalance of power were omnipresent in her home. At just eleven years old, Shalmiyev’s father stole her away to America, forever abandoning her estranged alcoholic mother, Elena. Motherless on a tumultuous voyage to the states, terrified in a strange new land, Shalmiyev depicts in urgent, poetic vignettes her emotional journeys through an uncharted world as an immigrant, artist, and, eventually, as a mother of two. As an adult, Shalmiyev voyages back to Russia to search endlessly for the mother she never knew—in her pursuit, we witness an arresting, impassioned meditation on art-making, gender politics, displacement, and most potently, motherhood. PRAISE for MOTHER WINTER by SOPHIA SHALMIYEV "Through a series of beautifully fragmented vignettes, Sophia Shalmiyev describes the search for her estranged mother, Elena, a woman deemed unfit to care for children. Lyrical and emotionally gutting, this book explores what it means to feel abandoned—and how to work your way towards healing." — O, The Oprah Magazine “A rich tapestry of autobiography and meditations on feminism, motherhood, art, and culture, this book is as intellectually satisfying as it is artistically profound. A sharply intelligent, lyrically provocative memoir.” — Kirkus Reviews (STARRED REVIEW) "The lyrical prose of Sophia Shalmiyev’s memoir, Mother Winter , splits open like layer after layer of an ornate matryoshka . With a mesmeric voice and scathing vulnerability, Shalmiyev peels her past down to its hollow core: the vacancy left by her absent mother. Across time and geography, Shalmiyev stitches together the diffuse pieces of her fractured narrative in order to find out what it truly is that makes someone the right 'type' of woman, the right 'type' of mother—especially as she becomes a mother herself." — The Paris Review "In its lyricism, fragmentation, and exploration of the body, Mother Winter is a feminist memoir of its moment, easily shelved with Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts & Carmen Maria Machado’s In The Dream House. " — Adroit Journal " Mother Winter is lyrical (an over-used adjective but apt here) and gutsy, delicate and meaty at once. [Shalmiyev] weaves together memoir and meditations on language, her own motherhood, and the writers and artists that she worshiped as her 'feminist mothers' in place of the real thing." — Lithub "Artist and writer Shalmiyev’s many-faceted memoir is an exploration of heartache and the ways life moves on even after irretrievable changes. Interestingly enough, Shalmiyev’s description of poet Mary Ruefle's work as 'poignant and casual' also captures the spirit of her own remarkable demonstration of public introspection.This is an elegy for lost mothers and lost homes and a consideration of the complexity of national and religious identities and gender roles. A feminist framework underpins a narrative peppered with references to Western art and literature from ancient to modern times and extended by many thoughtful detours. The author's own apparently dueling instincts as a mother and writer are examined with unflinching forthrightness."— Booklist "This debut is the memoir of a young woman’s life shaped by unrelenting existential terror. The story is told in fragmentary vignettes beginning with Shalmiyev’s fraught emigration as a young child from St. Petersburg, Russia to the United States, leaving behind the mother who had abandoned her. It closes with her resolve to find her estranged mother again."— The Millions (Most Anticipated February 2019) "Mother Winter takes extraordinary risks. [Its] most distinct pleasure is Shalmiyev’s authority as a writer, on a language level and in her capacity for assemblage."— Book and Film Globe The prose of Mother Winter is rendered with perceptive, enduring grace. Shalmiyev weaves an interlocking bricolage of abandonment, transnational identity, feminism as salvation, and the many mothers who shape our psyches..."— The Stranger "In Mother Wi