The Dream Life of Sukhanov

by OlgaGrushin (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2007

  $22.80

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.47

  Stepping out into the dusk of a warm Moscow evening, esteemed art critic Anatoly Sukhanov feels on top of the world: his career is glittering, his wife is beautiful and his children are clever. But the year is 1985 and the air is heavy with change. Sukhanov's future will be haunted by doubt. Beset by heartbreaking visions of a past he gave up, he questions his choices: in swapping a precarious life as a brilliant underground artist for comfort and security did he betray his dreams? And if his dreams are lost, what does he have left? One of the most highly acclaimed debuts of recent years, The Dream Life of Sukhanov is a work of demonic energy and startling imagery: a new classic.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2006

  $3.47

  At the age of fifty-six, Anatoly Sukhanov has everything a man could want: a glittering career, a beautiful wife and two children, a grand apartment in the smartest part of Moscow. He thinks, possibly, he has achieved his dream to carve from the world around him a small, secure happiness, all his own'. Then perestroika dawns and the rigid structures of the world in which Sukhanov has thrived begin to crumble and he is beset by heartbreaking visions from his past: many years ago Sukhanov had been a brilliant young artist in Moscow, but, fearing the stifling hand of the state, he made a decision to abandon his dreams in favour of a life of comfort and, most of all, safety. Now, as the shadows of his past bring him to a terrifying state of uncertainty he begins to realise that perhaps when he compromised his dreams to live a better life, he ended up hardly living at all. Brilliantly imagined, moving and with a driving plot, The Dream Life of Sukhanov is an utterly original tale of hope and fear, youth and old age, by a remarkable new talent in contemporary fiction.