Atomic Anna

Named a Most Anticipated Book by Bookish

Named a Best Book of the Month by Buzzfeed

"The novel is masterfully plotted."--New York Times Book Review

"Atomic Anna is a dazzling work of ingenuity and imagination."―Téa Obreht, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Inland

From the author of A Bend in the Stars, an epic adventure as three generations of women work together and travel through time to prevent the Chernobyl disaster and right the wrongs of their past.

Three brilliant women.
Two life-changing mistakes.
One chance to reset the future.

In 1986, nuclear scientist Anna Berkova is asleep in her bed in the Soviet Union when Chernobyl's reactor melts down. The energy surge accidentally sends her through time. When she wakes up, she's in 1992 and discovers Molly, her estranged daughter, shot in the chest. Should Anna travel in time to save her daughter or stop Chernobyl?

Anna goes to '60s Philadelphia, where Molly is coming of age as an adopted refusenik in a family full of secrets. Molly finds solace in comic books, drawing her own series, Atomic Anna. But when she meets volatile Viktor, their romance sets her life on a dangerous course. Anna then seeks out Molly's daughter, Raisa, in the '80s. Raisa is a lonely teen and math prodigy, who finds new issues of Atomic Anna in unexpected places. Each comic challenges her to solve equations leading to two impossible conclusions: Time travel is real and so is the strange old woman claiming to be her grandmother.

These three remarkable women must work together across time to prevent the greatest nuclear disaster of the twentieth century, but simply because you can change the past, does it mean you should?

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 04/05/2022
Pages: 448
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 9.06h x 6.14w x 1.65d
ISBN: 9781538734865


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 11/01/2021 pg. 16
Publishers Weekly 01/10/2022
Booklist 02/01/2022 pg. 16
Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2022

About the Author

Rachel Barenbaum is the author of the critically-acclaimed novels Atomic Anna and A Bend in the Stars. She is a prolific writer and reviewer. Her work has appeared in the LA Review of Books, The Tel Aviv Review of Books, and more. She is a scholar in residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis and is the founder/ host of the podcast Debut Spotlight. In a former life she was a hedge fund manager and spin instructor. She has degrees from Harvard in Business, and Literature and Philosophy. She is an elected member of Town Meeting in Brookline, MA.