The Polished Dust of Red Square

About this book

In an alternate 1930s Soviet Union, the air is thick with 'Lenin Dust'—iridescent pollen exhaled by the embalmed leader that manifests unconscious daydreams into tangible micro-realities. The state harvest these 'reverie-shards' to fuel industrial quotas and propaganda, crushing individual wonder under the boot of collective necessity. Mira Sokolova, a former Bolshoi ballerina crippled in a factory accident, lives a bitter existence in the Urals until she discovers a rogue vein of uncorrupted pollen. This substance heals her shattered legs but fractures her psyche into multiple overlaid selves. She is aided by Karim Al-Farid, an exiled Azerbaijani ethnographer immune to the dust's effects. Together, they are hunted by the Nocturne Brigade, elite agents intent on weaponizing the pollen to create a homogenized 'People's Reverie' that would erase all cultural distinctiveness. From the soot-choked foundries of the Urals to the hallucinatory underbelly of Moscow, Mira and Karim, alongside a deaf poet and a clockmaker, must navigate a landscape where memories can kill and dreams can overthrow empires. The journey forces Mira to confront her own fractured identity and Karim to abandon his observer's detachment, culminating in a confrontation atop Lenin's Mausoleum that will decide the fate of human consciousness in the Union.