Temporary Shelter

Akhmatova relying on herself.

TEMPORARY SHELTER is based on the life of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. It begins during during turbulent political times when Anna meets poet Nikolay Gumilev. Nikolay charms Anna into falling in love with him. He also creates a place for her in his free-spirited, Bohemian world. She forges her identity as a poet through love and loss, longing and tragedy. While society is undergoing a transformation, Anna is experiencing a personal one. She can’t always rely on Nikolay. She must learn to rely on herself and her poetry.

A scintillating and poetic novel, brimming with imagination, historical details, and profound emotional truths.–Jennifer Croft

A thoroughly timely novel about the past. Jennings envisions Anna Akhmatova struggling against gender expectations and heteronormativity-even among fellow bohemians in 1910s St. Petersburg. Through many challenges, Akhmatova in TEMPORARY SHELTER remains committed to her individual identity and purpose. The novel is gorgeously written; Jennings’s background as a poet and translator shines with imagery that is at once surprising and precise, sparse and sensuous.–Olga Livshin

Fiction