A monument never built. A revolution unraveling. A dream collapsing into steel and silence.

In the aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, a city trembling with both ruin and possibility becomes the crucible for one of history’s boldest artistic visions: a spiraling monument of steel and glass that would outshine the Eiffel Tower and broadcast the future to the world.

Into this charged moment steps Anya Petrova, a wide-eyed provincial art student who arrives in Petrograd with hope in her heart and revolution in her blood. Swept into the orbit of the visionary—and volatile—artist Vladimir Tatlin, Anya joins the team building the Tower to the Third International. Beside her are Dimitri Sokolov, a battle-hardened engineer whose pragmatism collides with utopian fever, and Lev Kaminsky, a sardonic fellow artist whose sharp tongue hides deeper wounds.

Blending richly textured fiction with deeply researched historical chapters, The Impossible Spire chronicles the rise and fall of Tatlin’s Tower through alternating narratives: dramatic scenes from within the cold, chaotic workshops where ideals meet iron, and compelling accounts of the artistic, political, and technological forces that shaped (and doomed) the Tower’s creation.

As famine grips the streets and ideology hardens into control, the Tower becomes a haunting symbol—of impossible ambition, artistic defiance, and the cost of believing in futures that may never come.

Epic in scope yet intimate in detail, Joseph Malott’s novel is a resonant exploration of the line between creation and collapse, where art, power, and humanity spiral together toward both transcendence and tragedy.

“A deeply moving blend of wonder and grit, imagination and rigor… This is historical fiction at its most ambitious and unforgettable.”