‘Little Foxes Took Up Matches’ by Katya Kazbek '19 to be Published in April

Little Foxes Took Up Matches by Katya Kazbek '19 will be published by Tin House on April 5, 2022.  

Kazbek’s debut novel is set in 1990s Moscow and follows Mitya, whose life mirrors the uncertainty of his country after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As Mitya grows up, he begins to ask himself: “Is he a boy, as everyone keeps telling him, or is he not quite a boy, as he often feels?”

After suffering abuse at the hands of his cousin, who has returned broken from the war, Mitya leaves home. As he journeys across underground Moscow in search of somewhere to belong, his tale is interlaced with the retelling of a Russian fairytale, Koschei the Deathless.

Little Foxes Took Up Matches received high reviews, with author Alexander Chee writing, “Many have tried and failed to summon the magic Katya Kazbek wields here as matter of factly as a switchblade. A relief, really, to read a debut novel as original as this―as cunning, wild, and free."

Author Sophia Shalmiyev also praises the magic of Kazbek’s novel, calling Little Foxes Took Up Matches “a luscious modern queer fable drawn in post-Soviet Russian red lipstick. Kazbek’s dreamy family of misfits forged in the feminine occult will stay with you forever."

Kazbek is a bilingual Russian/English writer, translator, and editor who co-founded the online magazine Supamodu. A graduate of Parsons and Oxford’s writing program, Kazbek received her MFA from Columbia University. She lives between New York, New York, and Moscow, Russia.

Little Foxes Took Up Matches is now available for pre-order.