The Circus and the Atom
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New Year 1988/1989: A theatre student, a taxi driver, a partisan, and a crook join a detective's family in Kiev for an ill-fated reunion. They and the Soviet nation face a violent reckoning as old secrets and fugitive hopes emerge.
Winner of the 2026 Independent Press Award for Literary Fiction and for World Literature
Winner of the Best of Novel prize in the 2025 Sunspot Literary Journal Solar Flare Contest
Sequel to The Girl in the Water, winner of the 2023 Independent Press Award for Literary Fiction
"riveting ... a high-stakes, character-driven drama infused with a palpable sense of political noir" -Printed Word Reviews
"another testament to [Howse's] writing prowess" -BlueInk Review
Joseph Howse
Joseph Howse lives in a Canadian fishing village, where he chats with his cats, crafts his books, and nurtures an orchard of hardy fruit trees. He is President of Nummist Media, a publishing and consulting company with specialties including computer vision and medical imaging. Since 2015, he has written a large part of Packt's library of technical books on OpenCV. Joseph is also the author of an award-winning novel series, Next Year's Snow, which follows a Soviet/Ukrainian family through several generations to the present day.
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