Eisen

A novel about cinema, history, and what it means to create when freedom is contingent

In Eisen, Guzel Yakhina turns her formidable historical imagination to the life of Sergei Eisenstein, the revolutionary filmmaker who reshaped cinema—and was nearly crushed by the system he helped glorify. From the triumph of Battleship Potemkin to the torment of censorship, exile, and artistic compromise under Stalin, Yakhina traces Eisenstein’s life as a drama of creation under pressure. 

Rather than a conventional biography, Eisen is a literary portrait, rendered in vivid, episodic scenes that mirror Eisenstein’s own theory of montage. Moscow, Berlin, Paris, and Mexico flicker past as art, politics, sexuality, and power collide. Yakhina explores the cost of genius in an authoritarian world, the body as both instrument and battleground, and the impossible demand placed on artists to serve ideology without losing themselves.