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Joseph Howse's Soviet-Era Novel The Circus and the Atom Wins World Literature and Audiobook Fiction at the 2026 NYC Big Book Award

The Nova Scotia author's second book, set in Kiev over the New Year of 1988 into 1989, also took a Distinguished Favorite for its cover, while his debut The Girl in the Water was honoured for its audiobook. The Next Year's Snow series has now sold to more than 80 public library systems in seven countries.

Darie NaniEditor-in-Chief21 September 2026·7 min read

Joseph Howse (second from left) on the literary fiction panel at the 2026 Kingsmead Book Fair in Johannesburg with Michiel Heyns, Sven Axelrad and Shakti Pillay

Joseph Howse's second novel, The Circus and the Atom, has won both the World Literature and the Audiobook Fiction categories at the 2026 NYC Big Book Award, and was named a Distinguished Favorite for its cover design. His debut, The Girl in the Water, added a Distinguished Favorite in Audiobook Fiction, so both books in his Next Year's Snow series were recognised on the same day. The two audiobooks are narrated by Annette Chown, and both covers are by Janet Howse, a painter and former stage actress who is also the author's mother.

Featured Book

The Circus and the Atom

Next Year's Snow, Book 2

by Joseph Howse

New Year 1988/1989: a theatre student, a taxi driver, a partisan and a crook join a detective's family in Kiev for an ill-fated reunion. They and the Soviet nation face a violent reckoning as old secrets and fugitive hopes emerge. The second novel in the Next Year's Snow series won the World Literature and Audiobook Fiction categories at the 2026 NYC Big Book Award and was a Distinguished Favorite for its cover design. The audiobook is narrated by Annette Chown.

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“This sequel explores a point of no return — the start of the USSR's breakup amidst an outpouring of grief, hope, exhaustion, and hatred — and the characters have little time to choose where they stand as this new world throws a time bomb their way.”
— Joseph Howse

The Circus and the Atom opens over the New Year of 1988 into 1989, when a theatre student, a taxi driver, a partisan and a crook join a detective's family in Kiev for a reunion that does not go to plan. Around them the Soviet Union is coming apart in several ways at once. Joseph describes people joining hands in song across the Baltics, neighbours turning on neighbours in the Caucasus on the brink of civil war, and shell-shocked teenage soldiers coming home from Afghanistan only to be deployed as riot police. For the family at the centre of the book the fallout of Chernobyl still shapes daily life, as it did in the first novel, and its members are only now beginning to speak about secrets they have kept from one another.

Cold War Historical Fiction Set in Kiev on the Eve of 1989

Printed Word Reviews called the novel "a riveting and deeply resonant work of historical fiction that trades the sprawling landscape of its predecessor for the claustrophobic tension of a single, pivotal moment in time", and described it as "a high-stakes, character-driven drama infused with a palpable sense of political noir". Earlier in 2026 the book won the Literary Fiction and World Literature categories at the Independent Press Award, an excerpt was published in South Africa's Sunday Times in May, and Joseph sat on the literary fiction panel at this year's Kingsmead Book Fair in Johannesburg alongside Michiel Heyns, Sven Axelrad and Shakti Pillay (pictured together above).

The Girl in the Water, published in 2022, introduced the same family through Nadia, a Soviet teenager who witnesses a friend's near-drowning on a remote northern beach. Over the course of the book her life is pulled apart by her family's move to Ukraine, a dubious courtship, the Chernobyl disaster, police surveillance and the war in Afghanistan. Four teenagers and a feral cat carry the story, which Joseph describes as a tragicomedy set against civilisations in decline. Printed Word Reviews called it "a deeply moving and meticulously crafted work of literary fiction that takes readers into the often-unseen domestic world of the Soviet Union in the 1980s", and IndieReader wrote that the prose "evokes the literary styles of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky". The debut won the Independent Press Award for Literary Fiction in 2023 and was itself a Distinguished Favorite at the NYC Big Book Award that year. It was also chosen as the Multicultural Fiction winner at the 2023 IAN Book of the Year Awards, took a bronze medal at the 2023 IPPY Awards, and received an Honorable Mention at the 2024 Eric Hoffer Book Award.

A Historical Fiction Audiobook Narrated by Annette Chown

“Every page is, to me, like a story told to one person and I believe this intimacy helps the work adapt well as audio.”
— Joseph Howse

Both audiobooks were produced by Audio Factory in Somerset, which organised auditions from which Joseph chose Annette Chown, a British actress who trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and whose credits include BBC Radio 4's Private Peaceful and audiobooks for the crime writer Carla Kovach. The Girl in the Water runs to just over 16 hours in her reading, and The Circus and the Atom followed in audio in July 2026. Joseph says she has created a range of voices for the whole cast, from teenage girls to policemen, circus artists, mathematicians and old survivors. "Leaning into the nuances of the text, she never fails to make a double meaning clear or to bring a sense of warmth, tears, and eccentricity to a tragicomic tale," he says. Awards sponsor Gabby Olczak said of the NYC Big Book Award result: "To have The Circus and the Atom recognized so broadly, from its core text to the audio performance and visual design, is a huge honor. Seeing both of these audiobooks celebrated with Annette Chown's brilliant narration must make this recognition especially rewarding for Mr. Howse."

Joseph says the writing is grounded in a wide observation of the world, drawn from his own life and from people close to him, and that the series is a saga spanning decades, continents and vast changes that resonate with diverse readers.

A Small-Press Series in 80 Public Library Systems Across Seven Countries

The Next Year's Snow series has sold to more than 80 public library systems in seven countries, which Joseph calls a library hit in the world of small-press books. The count includes a French translation of the first novel, Submergée, by the Lille-based translator Elisabeth L. Guillerm, released in May 2026 under the series title Les Neiges de demain. The books are published by Nummist Media in paperback, ebook and audiobook, and are stocked by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Chapters Indigo, Bookshop.org, Apple Books, Kobo and Google Play, with the audiobooks on Audible and library platforms including OverDrive and hoopla.

A Computer Vision Specialist Writing Novels From a Nova Scotia Fishing Village

Joseph was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and lives in a fishing village on the province's coast, where, as his author biography puts it, he chats with his cats and tends an orchard of hardy fruit trees. He holds four degrees from Dalhousie University, including a BA in French and a master's in computer science, and runs Nummist Media Corporation, a family company that consults on computer vision and image analysis. He has also written several technical books on the OpenCV library for Packt Publishing, including Learning OpenCV 5 Computer Vision with Python and OpenCV 4 for Secret Agents. He is a member of the Writers' Union of Canada and the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia.

Joseph's father, a journalist, wrote constantly about the USSR during his childhood, and the family had computer simulations of Soviet history and of events then in the news, among them Chernobyl, bread queues and tanks in the streets. Long before he could visit, he says, he wondered about people's lives in that part of the world. He began reading Eastern European literature at 15, has since travelled in Ukraine, Estonia and the other settings of the series, and has been close to several people who grew up in the former Soviet Union. "I love how the world of books can fill everyday conversations with people who have grown up in those cultures," he says. He still reads every draft aloud to his mother to test how it will perform.

The Next Year's Snow Series: A Second French Translation and Three More Novels

A French edition of the second novel, Le Cirque et l'atome, is due around the end of 2026. Joseph is now writing the third book, Vladimir and I, for 2027, set in the 1990s as several of the characters chase their dreams abroad, whatever the cost. The series will continue with a fourth instalment, The Painter at War, set in present-day Ukraine, and a prequel, Ninel, set during the Second World War.

The NYC Big Book Award is judged by publishers, writers, editors, designers, booksellers and librarians, and this year drew entries from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, Singapore, South Korea and elsewhere, including submissions from Penguin Random House, Routledge and Palgrave Macmillan. Winners and Distinguished Favorites are invited to receive their awards at the awards dinner on 10 April 2027, held during the BookCAMP event.

FAQ

What is The Circus and the Atom about?

It is the second novel in Joseph Howse's Next Year's Snow series, set in Kiev over the New Year of 1988 into 1989. A theatre student, a taxi driver, a partisan and a crook join a detective's family for a reunion as the Soviet Union begins to break up, and old secrets and a threat close to home force each of them to decide where they stand.

Do I need to read The Girl in the Water before The Circus and the Atom?

The two books follow the same family, and The Girl in the Water introduces Nadia and the events, including Chernobyl, that still shape the family in the sequel. Reading them in order gives the fullest picture, but the second novel is set at a single pivotal moment and introduces its characters in its own right.

Who narrates the Next Year's Snow audiobooks?

Both The Girl in the Water and The Circus and the Atom are narrated by the British actress Annette Chown. The Circus and the Atom won Audiobook Fiction at the 2026 NYC Big Book Award and The Girl in the Water was a Distinguished Favorite in the same category.

What is the NYC Big Book Award?

An annual international book competition announced each autumn, open to authors, publishers and illustrators of every size, from the largest publishing houses to self-published authors. Entries are judged by publishers, writers, editors, designers, booksellers and librarians, and the 2026 winners and Distinguished Favorites will be honoured at an awards dinner on 10 April 2027.