Like the exercises Sasha works through in the novel, Vita Nostra seems at first to be just beyond comprehension, but as readers proceed, it becomes more and more intoxicating as understanding blooms in the reader’s mind. Maturation is itself addressed as a form of transformation over the course of the novel, explored through several facets of Sasha’s life as she departs girlhood and grows into womanhood while attending the Institute. Book 1 Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko 4. Vita Nostra Latin for Our Life tells the story of Sasha Samokhina, a teenage girl living at home with her mother, who stands at a crossroads. The strangeness of the Institute is most apparent in the Specialty course, where students are given bizarre coursework: memorizing passages they can’t read and that make no sense, booklets of 'exercises' that seem impossible to solve, even assignments given on CD audio tracks. The English (and international) version of the Vita Nostra series contains two books (as of 2022) which are books 1 and 4 of the Russian series ''. Julia Meitov Hersey's translation of Vita Nostra was published by HarperCollins Publishers in November 2018. The book collected dozens of awards from readers and professionals. The novel reads at first like an ominous and mature Harry Potter: rather than an unhappy child transported to a magical school to explore almost endless possibilities, Sasha is taken from her fairly happy though mundane life and brought to a postsecondary institution with one course of study and only one possible outcome. It was the first novel in the thematically related 'Metamorphosis' cycle.
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