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Title details for A Terrible Country by Keith Gessen - Available

A Terrible Country

A Novel

by Keith Gessen
Ari Fliakos
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available
“Hilarious. . . . To understand Russia, read A Terrible Country.”
—Time

"This artful and autumnal novel, published in high summer, is a gift to those who wish to receive it."
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
"Hilarious, heartbreaking . . . A Terrible Country may be one of the best books you'll read this year."
—Ann Levin, Associated Press
A New York Times Editors' Choice
Named a Best Book of 2018 by Bookforum, Nylon, Esquire, and Vulture

A literary triumph about Russia, family, love, and loyalty—from a founding editor of n+1 and the author of Raising Raffi
When Andrei Kaplan’s older brother Dima insists that Andrei return to Moscow to care for their ailing grandmother, Andrei must take stock of his life in New York. His girlfriend has stopped returning his text messages. His dissertation adviser is dubious about his job prospects. It’s the summer of 2008, and his bank account is running dangerously low. Perhaps a few months in Moscow are just what he needs. So Andrei sublets his room in Brooklyn, packs up his hockey stuff, and moves into the apartment that Stalin himself had given his grandmother, a woman who has outlived her husband and most of her friends. She survived the dark days of communism and witnessed Russia’s violent capitalist transformation, during which she lost her beloved dacha. She welcomes Andrei into her home, even if she can’t always remember who he is.
Andrei learns to navigate Putin’s Moscow, still the city of his birth, but with more expensive coffee. He looks after his elderly—but surprisingly sharp!—grandmother, finds a place to play hockey, a café to send emails, and eventually some friends, including a beautiful young activist named Yulia. Over the course of the year, his grandmother’s health declines and his feelings of dislocation from both Russia and America deepen. Andrei knows he must reckon with his future and make choices that will determine his life and fate. When he becomes entangled with a group of leftists, Andrei’s politics and his allegiances are tested, and he is forced to come to terms with the Russian society he was born into and the American one he has enjoyed since he was a kid.
A wise, sensitive novel about Russia, exile, family, love, history and fate, A Terrible County asks what you owe the place you were born, and what it owes you. Writing with grace and humor, Keith Gessen gives us a brilliant and mature novel that is sure to mark him as one of the most talented novelists of his generation.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    July 10, 2018

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780525630906
      • File size: 332652 KB
      • Duration: 11:33:01

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from May 28, 2018
      In Gessen’s exceptional and trenchant novel, floundering 30-something professor Andrei Kaplan flees from New York to Russia, the country of his birth, to reassess his future and take care of his ailing grandmother. Called abroad by his enterprising older brother, Dima, Andrei arrives in Moscow to find the city of his memory surreally changed, his 89-year-old grandmother’s apartment one of the few spaces exempt from a partial Westernization. Andrei’s early attempts to reorient himself to post-Soviet Russian society bring about considerable insight and humor—getting rebuffed by a men’s adult hockey league, getting pistol-whipped outside a nightclub—leading him back to watching old Russian films with his grandmother. Eventually, though, Andrei carves out a place for himself among a group of leftists known as October, whose ranks include Yulia, a devout radical with whom Andrei embarks on a romantic relationship. Gessen (All the Sad Young Literary Men) meticulously forges these bonds before casting them in doubt, as Andrei’s involvement in a protest complicates the new life he has built. While poised to critique Putin’s Russia, this sharp, stellar novel becomes, by virtue of Andrei’s ultimate self-interest, a subtle and incisive indictment of the American character. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, the Wylie Agency

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Ari Fliakos strikes the right tone between pathos and irony in his narration of Gessen's novel. Russian-born Andrei, a struggling Ph.D. candidate living in New York City, returns to Moscow to care for his grandmother. Fliakos draws the listener in with his warm conversational tone; one can imagine oneself sitting with Andrei and Baba Seva at her kitchen table. Yet Andrei's ambivalence at returning to the "terrible country" of his birth informs Fliakos's reading as the conflict between his personal and professional obligations comes to a head. Fliakos's rendering of Baba Seva is both heartbreaking and hilarious, leaving an indelible impression of this frail and feisty elderly woman. This fully realized performance of a compelling novel will no doubt find many fans. D.G.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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