Disappearing Earth, which the NY Times called “nearly flawless” and People magazine deemed “thrilling” is a National Book Award finalist and an international bestseller. We were thrilled to be able to sit down with its author, Julia Phillips, to discuss how her story grew out of its setting, the impact of letting events unfold organically, and so much more.
Please describe the Kamchatka peninsula, the setting for your novel Disappearing Earth.
Kamchatka is an enormous, gorgeous volcanic peninsula hanging off Russia’s Pacific coast. If you can picture in your mind’s eye how the tail of Alaska swings out into the Bering Sea, then you can follow that swoop into Kamchatka, just on the other side of the water. Kamchatka is a particularly interesting region to me as a foreigner because it was a closed military territory during the Soviet Union. That means that for most of the 20th century, no foreigners were permitted to go there, and even Russians needed special government permission to visit.
How/why did you find yourself living there?
I went there in 2011 with the support of a Fulbright grant to research this book. Growing up, I both dreamed of being a novelist and had an abiding interest in the Russian language. Setting a work of fiction in Russia seemed to be ideal–that way, I could move to the country and keep learning the language while I wrote. It was a way to scratch two intellectual itches at once. And if I was picking any setting, then why not Kamchatka, the most beautiful and interesting place in the world?
How much of your story emerged from the setting (as opposed to what you knew about the story you would write before you arrived in Kamchatka)?
All of it! The setting was the only part of the book that I’d decided on before I went. Everything else–the plot, the characters, the structure–developed there.
Disappearing Earth begins with the kidnapping of two young sisters, but then you veer off, introducing readers to characters who are more or less at the periphery of the kidnapping event. Amazingly, this structure serves to make the reader even more concerned for the well-being of the missing girls. Did you think it would have this effect?
I certainly hoped it would. I’m so glad you felt that way as you read. It means a lot to me.
There is another disappearance in the book, but it gets second billing by comparison. Would you say the characters in Disappearing Earth are less concerned about finding out what happened to Lilia? Or is there something else going on?
Yes, many of the characters in the book, especially those in power, are much less concerned with Lilia’s disappearance than they are with the disappearance of the two sisters. And many are interested in even those headline-grabbing sisters as only a cautionary tale or a piece of tabloid news. I am fascinated by how we respond to different violences in different ways. What drove me to write this book was a desire to look at whole communities, systems, and power structures, and understand how many people act together to hurt or help each other.
Though the sisters disappear in the first chapter and Lilia disappears before the story even begins, both incidents feel like bookends supporting the crises faced by the other women in the story. These crises—issues of health, love, sex, parenting, feeling lonely, feeling trapped—are universal, but would you say the women’s responses to them are impacted by Kamchatka’s cultural landscape?
I’m glad you say the crises characters face in this book are universal because that was my hope in writing them. I want the specific details of each character’s situation—how they earn a living, for example, or how they decorate their apartments—to be deeply Kamchatkan, but I also want their emotions and their relationships to ring true for anyone anywhere in the world.
Can you talk about the two character groups—indigenous and ethnic Russian—you write about, and the impact they have on each other?
Absolutely. Kamchatka is a relatively recently colonized region of Russia, which is a huge, huge country with a substantial population of ethnic Russians, an East Slavic ethnic group. Around 1700, East Slavic and other European peoples came to Kamchatka, where they met and promptly went to war against indigenous Kamchatkans who’d been living on the peninsula for tens of thousands of years. Those indigenous ethnic groups include the Koryak and Itelmen. War, disease, and waves of ethnic Russian settlement mean that Kamchatka’s current population is only about 5% indigenous. That history shapes the way residents of the peninsula interact with each other. When we in the US see Russian-speaking characters in a movie or TV show, we are usually seeing ethnic Russians, who come from a specific cultural background. In reality, Russia is immensely diverse. I wanted this book to show some of that diversity, the country’s complicated history, and these ongoing tensions.
If you add the time you spent researching and writing to the time you were actually there in Kamchatka, you were “there” a good while. How hard was it to leave?
It was incredibly hard to leave. Each research trip left me convinced I wanted to move there permanently. But working on the book was a great way to work through that particular aching love for Kamchatka and better understand the place the peninsula needs to occupy in my mind, heart, and life. Loving and leaving it doesn’t hurt in the same way anymore. And now I can’t wait to visit again someday in the future!
Did you feel like an outsider in Kamchatka? Do any of the scenes in the book directly reflect anything you experienced there yourself?
Oh, yes, I was absolutely an outsider in Kamchatka. Ethnically, culturally, linguistically, socially, I was such a stranger there. I wrote the book to reflect on both that experience and my own Americanness; in the United States, I have privileges of race, creed, class, and status, and I am firmly on the inside of a society that shuts so many people out.
All of that went into the novel: the tensions between insiders and outsiders, what it feels like to feel you belong, what the other “others” around me in Russia had lived through. The power of being on top. The places put aside for women in a patriarchy, indigenous people in a colonized state, immigrants in a nationalist culture, and the rural poor in a nation fixated on urban wealth. How we put confidence in those similar to us; observe, ignore, or punish those who are different; and choose to reach beyond the boundaries of our communities. How we handle the consequences of doing any of those things. The characters in my book grapple with how to respond to people they consider “other” because I see Russians, Americans, and people everywhere grappling with the same thing.
Did your time in Kamchatka change you?
It changed me immensely. It was the most educational experience of my life.
Until Disappearing Earth you were mostly (though not exclusively) a writer of essays and articles. Can you talk about the experience of writing fiction as opposed to nonfiction?
My whole life, I’ve wanted to be a novelist. I’ve always been focused on fiction. Drafting book-length fiction sure takes a long time, though! So as I worked on this novel and another manuscript before that, I also tried to write and publish nonfiction. For me, nonfiction comes a little faster. It’s a more time-sensitive way to process the ideas and themes that go on to compel me in fiction.
Are you working on something new now?
I’m working on a second novel that explores some of the same themes as Disappearing Earth—the intertwining of gender and violence, the impact of social isolation, the potential healing power of community—in ways that feel new and totally challenging to me. I have so much to learn about the world. I am so grateful to have writing as my channel into that education.
Where can writers learn more about your work?
Folks can find me at juliaphillipswrites.com, on Facebook and Instagram at @juliaphillipswrites, on Twitter at @jkbphillips, and Goodreads.
Photo by Nina Subin
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