A Terrible Country

New
Paperback
2018
$14.65

In the summer of 2008, Andrei Kaplan moves from New York to Moscow to look after his ageing grandmother, a woman who 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 cafe to send emails, and eventually some friends, including a beautiful young activist named Yulia. Capturing with a miniaturist's brush the unfolding demands of family, fortune, personal ambition, ideology, and desire, A TERRIBLE COUNTRY is a compelling novel about ageing, radical politics, Russia at a crossroads, and the difficulty - or impossibility - of actually changing one's life.

Synopsis

In the summer of 2008, Andrei Kaplan moves from New York to Moscow to look after his ageing grandmother, a woman who 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 cafe to send emails, and eventually some friends, including a beautiful young activist named Yulia. Capturing with a miniaturist's brush the unfolding demands of family, fortune, personal ambition, ideology, and desire, A TERRIBLE COUNTRY is a compelling novel about ageing, radical politics, Russia at a crossroads, and the difficulty - or impossibility - of actually changing one's life.

$14.65

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20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 352
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
Published: 10 Jul 2018
ISBN 10: 1910695769
ISBN 13: 9781910695760

Media Reviews

`A cause for celebration: big-hearted, witty, warm, compulsively readable, earnest, funny, full of that kind of joyful sadness I associate with Russia and its writers. Gessen's particular gift is his ability to effortlessly and charmingly engage with big ideas - power, responsibility, despotism of various stripes, the question of what a country is supposed to do for the people who live in it - while still managing to tell a moving and entertaining human story. At a time when people are wondering whether art can rise to the current confusing political moment, this novel is a reassurance, from a wonderful and important writer.' - George Saunders, Man Booker Prize-winning author of LINCOLN IN THE BARDO

Author Bio

Keith Gessen is the author of A TERRIBLE COUNTRY, ALL THE SAD LITERARY YOUNG MEN and a founding editor of n+1. He edited and co-translated Kirill Medvedev's IT'S NO GOOD, also published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, and translated Nobel Prize-winner Svetlana Alexievich's VOICES FROM CHERNOBYL. He teaches journalism at Columbia and lives in New York with his wife and son.