By: Julian Mercer

Rediscovering a Story After Decades

Q: A Visit to Moscow springs from a true story that Rabbi Rafael Grossman once shared with you. What first drew you to this moment in history, and how did you find your way into adapting it for readers today?

Anna: Rabbi Grossman and I started working together in the early nineteen-eighties. One of our first ideas was a novel set during the Holocaust that included a character based on his cousin, who had helped lead the Jewish resistance in the Bialystok ghetto. While we were shaping that plot, the rabbi told me about something that had happened to him during a visit to the Soviet Union in nineteen sixty-five. He met a boy whose parents were Holocaust survivors. The child had never stepped outside the room where he was born. The detail stayed with me, and we put it into the novel we were trying to write. We reached about one hundred pages, and then the rabbi had to focus on other responsibilities.

The manuscript went quiet for years. When Rabbi Grossman passed away in 2018, I assumed the story would remain unfinished. Then his daughter sent me a box filled with our old pages. Seeing them again reminded me how powerful the story was. I looked through my notes and realized I no longer knew which parts were true memories and which were story elements we had invented. What remained clear was the message the rabbi always carried. Every person has the power to make the world better, even if it is only for a few people. I wanted that message to live on, but I could not publish the story as nonfiction. My editor suggested shaping it as historical fiction. That is how A Visit to Moscow took its final form.

Weaving Emotional Truth into History

Q: The book carries both the tension of the Soviet era and a sense of spiritual resilience. How did you find the balance between historical authenticity and emotional storytelling?

Anna: Writing it as historical fiction helped, but I also wanted to give the story a sense of timelessness. That is why I imagined the adult Zev in both the opening and closing pages. Zev survived by seeing the world as something extraordinary. His imagination allowed him to live fully even while confined to a single room in Moscow. Later, when his family reached Israel, the wide open spaces became an echo of the inner world he had already created.

I pictured the adult Zev right after his death, looking down at the land of Lebanon. He believes he is seeing heaven. Then everything begins to fade. His name. His memories. He hears a voice and moves toward it; there, he sees a man at his Shabbat table. Readers later recognize that the man is a fictional version of Rabbi Grossman. By the end, Zev remembers everything and understands that being alive had felt like heaven. That thought expresses the spirit of the story for me.

Shaping the Visual Language of the Book

Q: You worked closely with illustrator Yevgenia Nayberg. How did her interpretation influence the story you had envisioned?

Anna: Yevgenia brought her own memories of the Soviet Union to the artwork. She understood the atmosphere immediately. She created a light that feels both luminous and misty, setting the tone of the book. She also used several wordless panels to shift the pace in quiet and meaningful ways. Even though the events mostly take place in summer, she added a winter scene in Moscow, with snow filling the frame. That single scene lets readers feel time passing.

Yevgenia once told me that her biggest challenge was keeping the composition energetic. There is little physical movement in the story. Most scenes involve only two or three people. Yet the emotional movement is constant, and Yevgenia found a way to reflect that through her images. She slows the story in one moment and then gently quickens it in the next. Her art holds the reader inside the emotional rhythm of the text.

A Thread of Hiddenness Across Anna’s Work

Q: Many of your books share an interest in hidden stories and inner lives. What continues to pull you toward these themes?

Anna: I am drawn to the idea of something hidden that carries great meaning. In Shlemiel Crooks, there is a talking horse no one listens to, yet that horse saves a shipment of Passover wine. In Greenhorn, there is a small box that holds a private truth. In A Visit to Moscow, the hidden presence is Zev.

When I asked Rabbi Grossman what the real Zev was like, he told me that Zev never played but loved to imagine. He wanted to know what synagogues in America looked like, what Torahs felt like, and what children did in other countries. He showed no resentment about living his whole life inside a single room. The rabbi believed this was because of the love his parents gave him. Their choices were complicated, but they protected him from the influence of the Soviet government.

What Anna Hopes Readers Will Carry Forward

Q: The book has earned critical praise, including recognition from the Eisner Awards. What conversations do you hope it inspires, especially among readers who may not know much about life for Soviet Jews?

Anna: I would like the book to encourage people to reflect on the risks Jews have taken to protect their spiritual identity, and to think about the ideals that matter most to them. I hope they will spend time with the idea that being alive can feel like heaven, even when life is painful.

And I want readers to reflect on the epigraph, which teaches that saving a single life is like saving an entire world, and imagine how that teaching might appear in their own lives.

Get your copy of A Visit to Moscow today on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble.