Hi everyone, Devo Girl here with news that I have published another novel about a blind guy.
It's about a real person, Vasily Eroshenko, a blind man from the Ukrainian/Russian border, who traveled to Tokyo in 1915 and got involved with anarcho-feminist activists. It's told from the point of view of Kamichika Ichiko, also a real person with her own wild history, who was one of his closest friends.
This book is a little different from my previous novels in that it's not a romance and it doesn't have a happily ever after ending. As we know from history, the leftist activists in Japan did not succeed in preventing the fascist militarism that led to WWII. But when I learned the real story of Eroshenko, I just had to share it with you. I think you'll agree that the things he achieved were amazing, and his writing on ableism is still relevant today. Also Lovis says it's devvy. Thank you, Lovis!!
If you liked my previous historical novel set in Japan, Flowers by Night, you will love this one too.
Eroshenko is available now for pre-order on Amazon, to be released on Feb. 10. If you don't want to support that corrupt company, I totally get it. The book will also be available in wide release, including Bookshop.org. I will update those links later.
Please do pre-order and leave reviews. It makes a huge difference in the visibility and availability of the book. Thank you!
by Lucy May Lennox
Tokyo, 1915
While WWI rages, half a world away, Tokyo is a hotbed of radical ideas, as cosmopolitan intellectuals and activists from around the world cross paths in a rapidly modernizing city. Socialists and anarchists, musicians and artists from Japan, China, Korea, India, and Russia all passionately advocate for a more just and equal world.
Blind Ukrainian Vasily Eroshenko is drawn to Tokyo in search of greater opportunities and respect for blind people. At a salon for radicals on the second floor of a bakery, he meets the anarcho-feminists of Bluestocking magazine, fearless women fighting for bodily autonomy and free love.
Kamichika Ichiko is a contributor to Bluestocking and the first woman reporter at the Tokyo Daily News. She is most at home among the Bluestockings who dress like men and engage in “sister” relationships. Yet she is drawn to Eroshenko and helps him publish his political fables.
As Eroshenko becomes a celebrated writer and public speaker, he becomes more outspoken in advocating for socialism, feminism, and disability rights, but the authorities will not long tolerate this disruptive foreigner.
Based on extraordinary, heartbreaking true events, Eroshenko is a wild fever dream of utopianism, polyamory, artistic creation, jealousy, and persecution, unfurling against the backdrop of Japan’s belle époque, called Taishō Romanticism. When high and low, East and West, old and new intermingled, these activists dreamed of a better world, trying to stem the tide of growing fascism.
