Growing up, Julie Egdell never knew how much she had in common with Lewis Carroll's Alice. But when she went to work in St Petersburg she discovered that she was the spitting image of the Russian version of Alice - the dark-haired `Alisa' of Soviet illustrated children's stories, sarcastic, cruel and very Russian. A new city, a new language and a new identity. What could possibly go wrong? Here are poems of a strange and subversive wonderland, of a worm who thinks he is a caterpillar and the Baba Yaga who became a witch. It's a collection about life in post-Soviet Russia; mad hatters, tears, exile, longing, and falling down a cultural and linguistic rabbit hole.