US & Canada: Ecco (November 26, 2024)
UK: Oneworld (January 9, 2025)
Korea: Dasan (TBA)
A once-famous ballerina faces a final choice—to return to the world of Russian dance that nearly broke her, or to walk away forever—in this incandescent novel of redemption and love
On a White Night in 2019, prima ballerina Natalia Leonova returns to St. Petersburg two years after a devastating accident stalled her career. Once the most celebrated dancer of her generation, she now turns to pills and alcohol to numb the pain of her past.
She is unmoored in her old city as the ghosts of her former life begin to resurface: her loving but difficult mother, her absentee father, and the two gifted dancers who led to her downfall.
One of those dancers, Alexander, is the love of her life, who transformed both Natalia and her art. The other is Dmitri, a dark and treacherous genius. When the latter offers her a chance to return to the stage in her signature role, Natalia must decide whether she can again face the people responsible for both her soaring highs and darkest hours.
Painting a vivid portrait of the Russian ballet world, where cutthroat ambition, ever-shifting politics, and sublime artistry collide, City of Night Birds unveils the elevation of a dancer with both profound intimacy and breathtaking scope. Mysterious and alluring, passionate and virtuosic, Juhea Kim’s second novel is an affecting meditation on love, forgiveness, and the making of an artist in a turbulent world.
Praise for City of Night Birds
“Kim’s lyrical, cinematic writing kidnaps the senses. . . Kim’s pointillistic pages merge reader, protagonist and story, yielding a literary fever dream. . . Kim’s insider knowledge of Russian ballet, as well as her stylistic brilliance, are the by-products of a life of passions as deep and wide as her protagonist’s. . . The greatness of City of Night Birds made this reader lament its ending, and hope for another Juhea Kim novel, and another.”
—Meredith Maran, Washington Post
“Riveting…bold…Kim weaves in plot threads […] as well as complications related to various expressions of sexual desire to show that no form of art can exist separately from the complexity of life. This is another brilliant page-turner from Kim, whose first novel, Beasts of a Little Land (2021), was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Written in sumptuous prose, Kim’s novel is a feast for the senses.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Lush prose buttressed by vivid details... packed with drama, love affairs and high-stakes rivalries.”
—Vogue
“A mesmerizing page-turner.”
—Town & Country
“Engrossing… Kim delivers all the juicy drama readers have come to expect from a ballerina’s tale… The results will likely keep dance fans ravenously turning pages. A welcome addition to the literary dance canon, City of Night Birds is most compelling when its interpersonal dramas test the novel’s central question: whether, as one character opines, ‘Love doesn’t set anyone free. Art does.’”
—LA Times
“A deeply emotional portrayal. . . . Utterly immersive. Author Juhea Kim describes ballet technique, culture and history in such a vivid way that they will quickly become meaningful to an unfamiliar reader, and landscapes of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Paris are sketched with the same palpability. . . . For anyone who has ever been transfixed by the stage, City of Night Birds is not one to miss.”
—Bookpage
“A gorgeously written tale...Well-researched and immersive, the book is a testament to Kim’s lifelong admiration of ballet.”
—Karla Strand, Ms.
“By turns surreal and stark, City of Night Birds beautifully renders a world of triumphant nights, filled with shadows and golden light, shocking cruelty and the weightless freedom of a soaring bird.”
—Masters Review
“An ecstatic künstlerroman, meticulously researched, brutally frank, and deliciously glamorous, City of Night Birds enraptures as thoroughly as the ballerina at its beating heart. The artistry possessed by this novel’s sublimely gifted heroine is rivaled only by that of her author. Brava, Juhea Kim!”
—Rachel Lyon, author of Fruit of the Dead and Self-Portrait with Boy
“Shimmering, seductive characters dance across the pages of City of Night Birds, immersing you in the ecstatic, brutal world of a prima ballerina fulfilling her most beautiful and terrible ambitions. In this absorbing and passionate novel, Juhea Kim writes with fierce emotional intelligence about the darkness and desire that drive art and love, asking, What does it take to live a life beyond your wildest dreams?”
—Meng Jin, author of Self-Portrait with Ghost and Little Gods
“A beautifully crafted must-read. Juhea Kim’s City of Night Birds is a book that lingers long after the final pages have come and gone.”
—Jason Mott, National Book Award-winning author of Hell of a Book